Exodus 3:16-18 J. Message to the Elders. This paragraph, which overlaps the last, contains J's account of Moses's instructions, which are to be passed on (not as in Exodus 3:15 E, to the people at large, but) to the elders of Israel. We here first touch on an important Hebrew institution which both preceded and outlasted the monarchy The tribal elders (p. 112) or sheikhs were themselves a development from the heads of families, and gave place, after the settlement, to a localised aristocracy, the elders of the city. In any case their authority was wide, but somewhat undefined and lacking in coercive power. They were official representatives of weight and character, but they needed to carry with them the body of men who stood behind them, and they admitted of a chief sheikh (such as Moses) or a judge or king over them, whose senate they formed. The message assures them that Yahweh, their fathers-' God and their watchful Friend, would bring them up from low-lying Egypt to the high Canaanite table-land, and bids them join Moses in asking permission to leave Egypt for sacrifice to Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews. This demand, seven times urged in J, was a natural one in an age of national rites. At this juncture such sacrifice was a fitting response to the Divine revelation. Three days-' journey would not bring them to any of the supposed sites of Sinai, only to some nearer shrine in the wilderness, i.e. of Et-Tiy, the limestone plateau S. of Palestine. The proposal may have been meant as a feeler, or it may have been a ruse to deceive the national enemy, the Pharaoh.
Exodus 3:16. visited. Egypt should rather be taken notice of you and that which is done to you in Egypt.
Exodus 3:17. Perhaps read with LXX, And he hath said (moreover), a more natural way of referring to Exodus 3:8. So Baentsch. On the list of peoples, see Exodus 3:8. Here its omission improves the connexion.