Exodus 19:5-6 New English Translation
5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me[a] and keep[b] my covenant, then you will be my[c] special possession[d] out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, 6 and you will be to me[e] a kingdom of priests[f] and a holy nation.’[g] These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”
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- Exodus 19:5 tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.
- Exodus 19:5 tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”
- Exodus 19:5 tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”
- Exodus 19:5 tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (segullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew segulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.
- Exodus 19:6 tn Or “for me” (NIV, NRSV), or, if the preposition ל (lamed) has a possessive use, “my kingdom” (so NCV).
- Exodus 19:6 tn The construction “a kingdom of priests” means that the kingdom is made up of priests. W. C. Kaiser (“Exodus,” EBC 2:417) offers four possible renderings of the expression: 1) apposition, viz., “kings, that is, priests”; 2) as a construct with a genitive of specification, “royal priesthood”; 3) as a construct with the genitive being the attribute, “priestly kingdom”; and 4) reading with an unexpressed “and”—“kings and priests.” He takes the latter view that they were to be kings and priests. (Other references are R. B. Y. Scott, “A Kingdom of Priests (Exodus xix. 6),” OTS 8 [1950]: 213-19; William L. Moran, “A Kingdom of Priests,” The Bible in Current Catholic Thought, 7-20). However, due to the parallelism of the next description which uses an adjective, this is probably a construct relationship. This kingdom of God will be composed of a priestly people. All the Israelites would be living wholly in God’s service and enjoying the right of access to him. And, as priests, they would have the duty of representing God to the nations, following what they perceived to be the duties of priests—proclaiming God’s word, interceding for people, and making provision for people to find God through atonement (see Deut 33:9, 10).
- Exodus 19:6 tn They are also to be “a holy nation.” They are to be a nation separate and distinct from the rest of the nations. Here is another aspect of their duty. It was one thing to be God’s special possession, but to be that they had to be priestly and holy. The duties of the covenant will specify what it would mean to be a holy nation. In short, they had to keep themselves free from everything that characterized pagan people (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 171). So it is a bilateral covenant: they received special privileges but they must provide special services by the special discipline. See also H. Kruse, “Exodus 19:5 and the Mission of Israel,” North East Asian Journal of Theology 24/25 (1980): 239-42.
New English Translation (NET)
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