Exodus 5:21 - Exposition

They said unto them . The officers were too full of their wrongs to wait until questioned. They took the word, and, without relating the result of their interview, implied it. The Lord look upon you, and judge, they said, meaning "the Lord (Jehovah) consider your conduct, and judge it" not exactly, "condemn it and punish it" (Keil and Delitzsch)—but "pass sentence on it," "judge whether it has been right or not." We make this appeal because ye have at any rate done us a great injury— ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh. (Note the mixed metaphor, which shows- perhaps rather that "in the eyes" had lost its original meaning, and come to signify no more than "with" or "in respect of," than that the literal meaning of making a person's savour to "stink" did not occur to the writer.) Nay, ye have done more— ye have put a sword in the hand of his servants to slay us. That is to say, "ye have armed them with a weapon wherewith we expect that they will take our lives." Either they will beat us to death—and death is a not infrequent result of a repeated employment of the bastinado—or when they find that punishment unavailing they will execute us as traitors. On the use of the bastinado as a punishment in Egypt, see Chabas, 'Melanges Egyptologiques,' 3 me serie, vol. 1. pp. 100-6.