EXAMPLE (Ex. 14:21-2):<\/strong><\/p>\n Similarly to number 2, the sound of the Hebrew text can yield insights into structure and rhetoric\u2014designed to alert the reader to the thrust of a passage. In the Exodus story, right after their liberation, the former slaves find themselves pursued by the Egyptian chariots, with the sea to their backs. In their panic, they bitterly accuse their leader Moshe (Moses):<\/p>\n they said to Moshe: Note the repetitions at the end of each line\u2014\u201cEgypt\u201d five times and \u201cwilderness twice\u2014apparently meant to stress the irony of the Israelites\u2019 predicament: as they see it, Egypt means life, and the wilderness, certain death. Important as well is the repetition of \u201cserve,\u201d the key word of the entire book, which early on denotes slavery, but later, the worship of God (Moshe\u2019s request to Pharaoh is \u201cSend my people free, that they may serve me,\u201d and the building of the portable sanctuary in the wilderness, which takes up most of the second half of the book, uses \u201cserve\u201d constantly).<\/p>\n Contrast this reading of the text with a standard translation, in this case the widely-used New International Version:<\/em><\/p>\n They said to Moses, \u201cWas it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to The force of the Hebrew here has been muted. In the interests of varied language, it transposes \u201cto die in the desert\u201d to \u201cto the desert to die,\u201d ignoring how the original has both identically, for emphasis; it varies \u201cEgypt\u201d to \u201cEgyptians\u201d; and it reads more like relaxed standard prose. But the Hebrew, throughout that chapter, is a heightened, rhythmic form of language, meant to instruct as well as to entertain or even inspire.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nIs it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us out to die in the wilderness?
\nNow what have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt?
\nIs this not the very word that we spoke to you in Egypt,
\nsaying: Let us alone, that we may serve Egypt?
\nIndeed, better for us serving Egypt
\nthan our dying in the wilderness!<\/p>\n
\nthe desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn\u2019t we say to
\nyou in Egypt, \u201cLeave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians\u201d? It would have been better for us
\nto serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!\u201d<\/p>\n