Why the Bible Uses the Word “And” So Much

In my previous column, I discussed an unconventional though not unprecedented feature of the new Koren Tanakh recently published in Jerusalem, namely, its spelling of proper biblical names according to their Hebrew pronunciation, as in “Moshe” rather than “Moses.” At the column’s end, I promised to deal with a second such feature the next time. Let’s now do this, using as our prooftext a passage from last Shabbat’s Torah reading of Yitro, the portion of Exodus that tells of the revelation at Mount Sinai. I’ll begin with this passage as it appears in the King James Version—still, after some 400 years, the gold standard in English Bible translation—and then quote it from The Koren Tanakh.

First the King James:

And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And then the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.