Exodus 8:26 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Exodus 8:26
And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
meet
נָכוֹן֙na.khOn
H3559
properly · verb, niphal active participle, masculine singular absolute
do
לַעֲשׂ֣וֹתla.'a.Sot
H6213
to do or make · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
for
הֵ֣ןhen
H2005
lo! · interjection
sacrifice
נִזְבַּ֖חniz.Bach
H2076
to slaughter an animal (usually in sacrifice) · verb, qal imperfect, 1st person common plural
abomination
תּוֹעֲבַ֣תto.'a.Vat
H8441
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct
Egyptians
מִצְרַ֔יִםmitz.Ra.yim
H4714
Mitsrajim · proper noun, a place name
LORD
לַיהוָ֣הla.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
God
אֱלֹהֵ֑ינוּ'e.lo.Hei.nu
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
sacrifice
נִזְבַּ֞חniz.Bach
H2076
to slaughter an animal (usually in sacrifice) · verb, qal imperfect, 1st person common plural
abomination
תּוֹעֲבַ֥תto.'a.Vat
H8441
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct
Egyptians
מִצְרַ֛יִםmitz.Ra.yim
H4714
Mitsrajim · proper noun, a place name
eyes
לְעֵינֵיהֶ֖םle.'ei.nei.Hem
H5869
an eye (literally or figuratively) · preposition + noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
stone
יִסְקְלֻֽנוּyis.ke.Lu.nu
H5619
properly · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural + pronominal suffix
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 43:32 And they set on for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him, by themselves: because the Eg…
Genesis 46:34 That ye shall say, Thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle from our youth even until now, both we, and also our fathers: that ye may dwel…
Exodus 3:18 And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him,…
Deuteronomy 7:25-26 The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, le…
Deuteronomy 12:30-31 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not aft…
1 Kings 11:5-7 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
2 Kings 23:13 And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel ha…
Ezra 9:1 Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Exodus 8:20–end
Here is the story of the plague of flies, in which we are told,
I. How it was threatened, like that of frogs, before it was inflicted. Moses is directed (Exo 8:20) to rise early in the morning, to meet Pharaoh when he came forth to the water, and there to repeat his demands. Note, 1. Those that would bring great things to pass for God and their generation must rise early, and redeem time in the morning. Pharaoh was early up at his superstitious devotions to the river; and shall we be for more sleep and more slumber when any service is to be done which would pass well in our account in the great day? 2. Those that would approve themselves God's faithful servants must not be afraid of the face…
Pharaoh called for Moses, . . . Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land, &c.--Between impatient anxiety to be freed from this scourge and a reluctance on the part of the Hebrew bondsmen, the king followed the course of expediency; he proposed to let them free to engage in their religious rites within any part of the kingdom. But true to his instructions, Moses would accede to no such arrangement; he stated a most valid reason to show the danger of it, and the king having yielded so far as to allow them a brief holiday across the border, annexed to this concession a request that Moses would entreat with Jehovah for the removal of the plague. He promised to do so, and it was removed the follo…
We shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians - That is, The animals which they hold sacred, and will not permit to be slain, are those which our customs require us to sacrifice to our God; and should we do this in Egypt the people would rise in a mass, and stone us to death. Perhaps few people were more superstitious than the Egyptians. Almost every production of nature was an object of their religious worship: the sun, moon, planets, stars, the river Nile, animals of all sorts, from the human being to the monkey, dog, cat, and ibis, and even the onions and leeks which grew in their gardens. Jupiter was adored by them under the form of a ram, Apollo under the form of a crow, Bacchus u…
The Church Fathers
The Egyptians disdained the eating of sheep. But what the Egyptians abhor, the Israelites offer to God. The unjust despise a clean conscience as weak and abject, but the just turn it into a sacrifice to God of virtue. The righteous, as they worship God, offer their purity and gentleness to him. The reprobate despise these virtues and consider them foolishness.
The Egyptians disdained the eating of sheep. But what the Egyptians abhor, the Israelites offer to God. The unjust despise a clean conscience as weak and abject, but the just turn it into a sacrifice to God of virtue. The righteous, as they worship God, offer their purity and gentleness to him. The reprobate despise these virtues and consider them foolishness. Exposition of the Old and New Testament, Exodus
You tell me that you have felt a difficulty in the text We shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God. But you had the means of solving it, for it is written in the book of Genesis, that a shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians, and this not on account of the shepherd himself, but of his flocks. For the Egyptians were tillers of the ground, but Abraham and Jacob, and afterwards Moses and David, were shepherds, and in this function exercised a certain kingly discipline. The Egyptians then hated sacrifices which were duly offered; the pursuit of virtue, that is, which is perfect and replete with discipline. But that which these evil men hated is in the sight of the good sincere and pious. The licentious man hates the works of virtue, the glutton shrinks from them. And so the Egyptian's body, loving the charms of pleasure, has an aversion to the virtues of the soul, hates its rule, and shrinks from the discipline of virtue, and all such like works. But what the Egyptian shrinks from--he who is an Egyptian rather than a man--that do thou, who hast the knowledge of what befits man, embrace and follow: and shun those things which they pursue and choose; for these two things cannot agree together, wisdom and folly. Thus as wisdom and continence remove themselves from those who are, as it were, in the ranks of unwisdom and intemperance, so no foolish and incontient man has any part in what belongs to the goods and heritage of the wise and continent man.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Abomination — This word is used, (1.) To express the idea that the Egyptians considered themselves as defiled when they ate with strangers (Gen. 43:32). The Jews subsequently followed the same practice, holding it…
Fly — Heb. zebub, (Eccl. 10:1; Isa. 7:18). This fly was so grievous a pest that the Phoenicians invoked against it the aid of their god Baal-zebub (q.v.). The prophet Isaiah (7:18) alludes to some…
Fly, Flies — The two following Hebrew terms denote flies of some kind:
Nadab — Liberal, generous. (1.) The eldest of Aaron’s four sons (Ex. 6:23; Num. 3:2). He with his brothers and their father were consecrated as priests of Jehovah (Ex. 28:1). He afterwards perished with…
Plagues, The Ten — The occasion on which the plagues were sent is described in Exod 3-12.
Egypt · Inhabitants of: Abhorred the sacrifice of oxen, &c — Inhabitants of: Abhorred the sacrifice of oxen, &c
Flies · Plague of — Plague of
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
And Moses said, it is not meet so to do,.... It being the command and will of God that they should go three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice there; and besides it was dangerous, the Egyptians might be provoked by their sacrifices to fall upon them, and kill them:
for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God; by which Moses is not to be understood as calling the idols of Egypt an abomination, as being so to God and to all good men, that were not idolaters; for though they were, Moses would scarcely call them so before Pharaoh, when he could have made use of another word as well; but his meaning is, that the Israelites would sacrifice that which…
Exodus 8:20-27
20. And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, (lo, he cometh forth to the water,) and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me:
20. Tunc dixit Jehova ad Mosen, Surge mane, ac te siste in conspectum Pharaonis: Ecce egredietur ad aquas: et dices ad eum, Sic ait Jehova, Dimitte populum meum ut serviant mihi.
21. Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are
21. Quod si tu non dimiseris populu…
As the Egyptian magicians saw nothing more than the finger of God in the miracle which they could not imitate, that is to say, the work of some deity, possibly one of the gods of the Egyptians, and not the hand of Jehovah the God of the Hebrews, who had demanded the release of Israel, a distinction was made in the plagues which followed between the Israelites and the Egyptians, and the former were exempted from the plagues: a fact which was sufficient to prove to any one that they came from the God of Israel. To make this the more obvious, the fourth and fifth plagues were merely announced by Moses to the king. They were not brought on through the mediation of either himself or Aaron, but we…
Moses pointed out the impossibility of what Pharaoh was asking on the grounds of the Egyptians’ own prejudice: They considered all Semites to be uncultured and uncouth (see Gen 43:32). • The Hebrews were leaving Egypt in order to worship God (see, e.g., Exod 5:1; 7:16; 8:1, 20). God’s purpose for the Exodus was to lead his people into a proper relationship with him.
Rashi on Exodus 8:26
ויעתר אל ה׳ AND ENTREATED THE LORD (the verb is the Kal) — he concentrated his energies on prayer. So, too, if it had wished to use the term וַיַעְתִּיר (the Hiphil) it could have used it, and that would have signified, “and he increased words in prayer”. But when it uses an expression denoting “and he did something” (the Kal) it signifies “he prayed much (devoutly)”.
