Discovery BoxExodus 22:27 
Context22:27 for it is his only covering – it is his garment for his body. 1 What else can he sleep in? 2 And 3 when he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am gracious.
Exodus 32:18
Context32:18 Moses 4 said, “It is not the sound of those who shout for victory, 5 nor is it the sound of those who cry because they are overcome, 6 but the sound of singing 7 I hear.” 8
1 tn Heb “his skin.”
2 tn Literally the text reads, “In what can he lie down?” The cloak would be used for a covering at night to use when sleeping. The garment, then, was the property that could not be taken and not given back – it was the last possession. The modern idiom of “the shirt off his back” gets at the point being made here.
3 tn Heb “and it will be.”
4 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
5 tn Heb “the sound of the answering of might,” meaning it is not the sound of shouting in victory (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 418).
6 tn Heb “the sound of the answering of weakness,” meaning the cry of the defeated (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 415).
7 tn Heb “answering in song” (a play on the twofold meaning of the word).
8 sn See A. Newman, “Compositional Analysis and Functional Ambiguity Equivalence: Translating Exodus 32, 17-18,” Babel 21 (1975): 29-35.
