Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary Verse 5. I heard a language I understood not. ] This passage is difficult.
Who heard? And what was heard? All the Versions, except the Chaldee, read the pronoun in the third person, instead of the first. "He heard a language that he understood not." And to the Versions Kennicott reforms the text, [my h[dy al tp sephath lo yadah yisma; "a language which he did not understand he heard." But what was that language? Some say the Egyptian; others, who take Joseph to signify the children of Israel in general, say it was the declaration of God by Moses, that Jehovah was the true God, that he would deliver their shoulder from their burdens, and their hands from the pots-the moulds and furnaces in which they formed and baked their brick.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 1-7 - All the worship we can render to the Lord is beneath his excellences and our obligations to him, especially in our redemption from sin an wrath. What God had done on Israel's behalf, was kept in remembrance by public solemnities. To make a deliverance appear more gracious, mor glorious, it is good to observe all that makes the trouble we ar delivered from appear more grievous. We ought never to forget the bas and ruinous drudgery to which Satan, our oppressor, brought us. But when, in distress of conscience, we are led to cry for deliverance, the Lord answers our prayers, and sets us at liberty. Convictions of sin and trials by affliction, prove his regard to his people. If the Jews on their solemn feast-days, were thus to call to mind their redemptio out of Egypt, much more ought we, on the Christian sabbath, to call to mind a more glorious redemption, wrought out for us by our Lord Jesu Christ, from worse bondage.
Original Hebrew עדות5715 ביהוסף3084 שׂמו7760 בצאתו3318 על5921 ארץ776 מצרים4714 שׂפת8193 לא3808 ידעתי3045 אשׁמע׃8085
