Exodus 8:9

Verse Exodus 8:9. Glory over me] התפאר עלי hithpaer alai. These words have greatly puzzled commentators in general; and it is not easy to assign their true meaning. The Septuagint render the words thus: Ταξαι προς με ποτε, c., Appoint unto me when I shall pray, c. The constitue mihi quando of the Vulgate is exactly the same and in this sense almost all the versions understood this place. This countenances the conjectural emendation of Le Clerc, who, by the change of a single letter, reading התבאר hithbaer for התפאר hithpaer, gives the same sense as that in the ancient versions. Houbigant, supposing a corruption in the original, amends the reading thus: אתה באר עלי attah baar alai-Dic mihi quo tempore, c., "Tell me when thou wishest me to pray for thee," c., which amounts to the same in sense with that proposed by Le Clerc. Several of our English versions preserve the same meaning so in the Saxon Heptateuch, [Anglo-Saxon] so in Becke's Bible, 1549, "And Moses sayed unto Pharaoh, Appoint thou the time unto me." This appears to be the genuine import of the words, and the sense taken in this way is strong and good. We may conceive Moses addressing Pharaoh in this way: "That thou mayest be persuaded that Jehovah alone is the inflicter of these plagues, appoint the time when thou wouldst have the present calamity removed, and I will pray unto God, and thou shalt plainly see from his answer that this is no casual affliction, and that in continuing to harden thy heart and resist thou art sinning against God." Nothing could be a fuller proof that this plague was supernatural than the circumstance of Pharaoh's being permitted to assign himself the time of its being removed, and its removal at the intercession of Moses according to that appointment. And this is the very use made of it by Moses himself, Exodus 8:10, when he says, Be it according to thy word: that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord our God; and that, consequently, he might no longer trust in his magicians, or in his false gods.