Is the Amplified Bible over the top?
In Exodus 4:19 the Lord tells Moses to go to Egypt and gives directions, but in verse 24 I read that the Lord “sought to kill him.” So why would the Lord give an instruction followed by seeking his death? The Amplified Bible adds the text in brackets that helped me: “Now it happened at the lodging place, that the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him [making him deathly ill because he had not circumcised one of his sons].” Something seemed a little off. I remembered that passage in Exodus well; I’ve puzzled over it many times. It seemed to me, and I confirmed this with a quick check of a few translations and my Lexham English-Hebrew interlinear, that the Amplified Bible was adding its own ideas to the text. Now there’s nothing wrong with speculation and interpolation as long as it’s clearly marked off (as the Amplified Bible does) and understood by the reader to be speculation and interpolation. It’s the latter I’m concerned about: I fear that some readers may assume that the things