Now therefore is “And now,” meaning “In the present situation,” or “Since I have done this,” rather than “At this time.” Forgive my sin seems to be addressed only to Moses, since the verb is “you” singular, but several ancient versions have pluralized it. Forgive is a difficult term to translate in many languages. Examples from a variety of languages that may be helpful to translators are “throw away sin,” “cover over…,” “forget….” A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark, page 13, gives many more excellent examples. The word for sin is the noun form of the verb used in verse 16. I pray you is a two-letter word used to strengthen a request or soften a command, in this case probably doing both. Only this once is an expression that literally means “only a step,” or “only a time.”

And entreat the LORD your God means to “pray” or “plead” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). The pronoun your is plural. Only to remove this death from me is a metaphor that refers to the plague. It may be understood as a “deadly pest” (New American Bible), or a “fatal punishment,” or a “punishment that causes death.” In languages that do not use indirect speech, the sentence And entreat the LORD your God … may be expressed as “Please say to Yahweh, ‘I plead with you to take away….’ ” The word only is often difficult to translate, so Good News Translation omits it. It should not be understood here as “only this plague and nothing more,” for the metaphor of death describes it as about the worst thing possible. New Revised Standard Version translates “pray … that at the least he remove this deadly thing from me.”

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 .