Texts in Conversation
Exodus 14 describes the pillar of cloud as a "dark cloud" that "lit up the night," an odd pairing of darkness and light. The Greek Septuagint rewrites this to remove the light, describing only "gloom and darkness."
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 14:20
Hebrew Bible
19 The angel of God, who was going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. 20 It came between the Egyptian camp and the Israelite camp; it was a dark cloud and it lit up the night so that one camp did not come near the other the whole night. 21 Moses stretched out his hand toward the sea, and the Lord drove the sea apart by a strong east wind all that night, and he made the sea into dry land, and the water was divided.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Exodus 14:20
Septuagint
19 And the angel of God that went before the camp of the children of Israel moved and went behind, and the pillar of the cloud also moved from before them and stood behind them. 20 And it went between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and stood; and there was darkness and blackness; and the night passed, and they did not come near to one another during the whole night. 21 And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the Lord carried back the sea with a strong south wind all the night, and made the sea dry, and the water was divided.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Exod 14:20 ... LXX καὶ ἐγένετο σκότος καὶ γνόφος, καὶ διῆλθεν ἡ νύξ, καὶ οὐ συνέμιξαν ἀλλήλοις "and there was darkness and gloom and the night passed, and they did not mix with one another." ... Here Symmachus clearly reflects the common midrashic interpretation, that the cloud created darkness for the Egyptians and light for the Israelites. His reading is well attested in the manuscript sources, and is certainly not a close translation of the difficult Hebrew text. ..."
Alison Salvesen, “Midrash in Greek?” in On Stone and Scroll: Essays in Honour of Graham Ivor Davies (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 2011), 530–531.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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