Take your flocks begins with the little word gam (“also”), which is the third of five emphatic uses of this word (see verse 31). Here it may be understood as “And also take your flocks,” or “Take even your flocks.” Flocks includes both “sheep” and “goats” (Good News Translation). (See the comment on flocks at 9.2-3.) And your herds is “gam your cattle.” The same word for herds is used in 10.9. The repeated use of gam suggests that the donkeys were included as well. (See the discussion at 10.9.) As you have said repeats the same phrase in verse 31, but here two words are used instead of one; literally “just as you said.” New American Bible has “as you demanded.” Good News Translation omits this phrase as unnecessary (similarly Revised English Bible), but it may be well to retain it, since the repetition suggests that the king is finally agreeing to all that Moses had demanded.

And be gone is the sixth use of the imperative, repeating the same word as the third command, “go,” in verse 31. And bless me also is literally “and you [plural] will bless also [gam] me.” This is a request, not a command, suggesting that the Pharaoh is finally recognizing the power of Yahweh. For one person to bless another really means to ask God to bless that person. So Good News Translation has “Also pray for a blessing on me.” Revised English Bible has “and ask God’s blessing on me also,” and New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh “And may you bring a blessing on me also!” (New American Bible‘s interpretation, “and you will be doing me a favor,” is doubtful.) In many languages “blessing” will be expressed as “kindness” or “mercy”; for example, “Please ask Yahweh to be merciful [or, kind] to 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 .