Exodus 14:12

Isn’t this what we told you ¹  in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians, ²  because it is better for us to serve ³  the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’” ⁴ 

Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"

"Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."

Didn’t we tell you to leave us alone while we were still in Egypt? Our Egyptian slavery was far better than dying out here in the wilderness!"

Back in Egypt didn't we tell you this would happen? Didn't we tell you, 'Leave us alone here in Egypt--we're better off as slaves in Egypt than as corpses in the wilderness.'"

Did we not say to you in Egypt, Let us be as we are, working for the Egyptians? for it is better to be the servants of the Egyptians than to come to our death in the waste land.

Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."

" Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians?’ For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness."

Isn’t this what we told you ¹  in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians, ²  because it is better for us to serve ³  the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’” ⁴ 

¹ tn Heb “Is not this the word that we spoke to you.”

² sn U. Cassuto (Exodus, 164) explains this statement by the people as follows: “The question appears surprising at first, for we have not read previously that such words were spoken to Moses. Nor is the purport of the protest of the Israelite foremen (v 21 [5:21]) identical with that of the words uttered now. However, from a psychological standpoint the matter can be easily explained. In the hour of peril the children of Israel remember that remonstrance, and now it seems to them that it was of a sharper character and flowed from their foresight, and that the present situation justifies it, for death awaits them at this moment in the desert.” This declaration that “we told you so,” born of fright, need not have been strictly accurate or logical.

³ tn Heb “better for us to serve.”

⁴ tn Since Hebrew does not use quotation marks to indicate the boundaries of quotations, there is uncertainty about whether the Israelites’ statement in Egypt includes the end of v. 12 or consists solely of “leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians.” In either case, the command to Moses to leave them alone rested on the assumption, spoken or unspoken, that serving Egypt would be less risky than what Moses was proposing. Now with the Egyptian army on the horizon, the Israelites are sure that their worst predictions are about to take place.