I will set your bounds refers to the “borders” (Good News Translation), or boundary lines marking the extent of Israel’s territory. Revised English Bible has “I will establish your frontiers.” Your is singular. From the Red Sea, literally “from the Sea of Reeds,” refers to what is now called “the Gulf of Aqaba” (Good News Translation), not to the area where the Israelites had crossed in their escape from Egypt. (See the discussion at 10.19. See also 1Kgs 9.26.) To the sea of the Philistines is obviously “the Mediterranean Sea” (Good News Translation). This marks the distance from the southeast to the northwest.

And from the wilderness refers to the Sinai “desert” to the southwest of Palestine, and to the Euphrates marks the distance to “the Euphrates River” (Good News Translation) in the northeast. The Hebrew simply has “the river,” which in 1.22 refers to the Nile River in Egypt. But after the Israelites settled in Palestine, reference to “the River” (New International Version and others) meant the great Euphrates river northeast of Palestine, which flows into the Persian Gulf.

For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands is literally “for I will give in your [plural] hand the dwellers of the land.” This, of course, refers to the Canaanites and the other ethnic groups that occupied the area of Palestine. Good News Translation brings out the meaning: “I will give you power over the inhabitants.” And you shall drive them out before you shifts back to the singular you. The occasional shift in the second person from singular to plural, and from plural to singular, is not always significant in meaning. In such cases it should not be followed if the translation would sound unnatural. Before you is identical with “from before you” in verses 29-30. Good News Translation has a good model, “you will drive them out as you advance,” and Contemporary English Version has “and you will force them out of the land.”

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .