And if thou deal thus with me,.... Let the whole weight of government lie upon me, and leave the alone to bear it:

kill me, I pray thee, out of hand; take me out of the world at once, or "kill me now, in killing" (n); dispatch me immediately, and make a thorough end of me directly:

if I have found favour in thy sight; if thou hast any love for me, or art willing to show me a kindness, to remove me by death, I shall take as one:

and let me not see my wretchedness; or live to be the unhappy man I shall be; pressed with such a weight of government, affected and afflicted with the wants of a people I cannot relieve, or seeing them bore down with judgments and punishments inflicted on them for their sins and transgressions I am not able to prevail upon them to abstain from: so the Targum of Jerusalem,"that I may not see their evil, who are thy people;''so Abendana, and in the margin of some Hebrew copies, it is read,"this is one of the eighteen words, the correction of the scribes;''who, instead of "my wretchedness" or evil, corrected it, "their wretchedness" or evil; but Aben Ezra says there is no need of this correction.

(n) "occide me nunc occidendo", Drusius; "occide me jam, occide", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

"If Thou deal thus with me, then kill me quite (הרג inf. abs., expressive of the uninterrupted process of killing; see Ewald, 280, b.), if I have found favour in Thine eyes (i.e., if Thou wilt show me favour), and let me not see my misfortune." "My misfortune:" i.e., the calamity to which I must eventually succumb.

And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy {i} sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.

(i) I would rather die than see my grief and misery daily increased by their rebellion.

11:15 My wretchedness - Heb. my evil, my torment, arising from the insuperable difficulty of my office and work of ruling this people, and from the dread of their utter extirpation, and the dishonour which thence will accrue to God and to religion, as if, not I only, but God also were an impostor.

11:10-15 The provocation was very great; yet Moses expressed himself otherwise than became him. He undervalued the honour God had put upon him. He magnified his own performances, while he had the Divine wisdom to direct him, and Almighty power to dispense rewards and punishments. He speaks distrustfully of the Divine grace. Had the work been much less he could not have gone through it in his own strength; but had it been much greater, through God strengthening him, he might have done it. Let us pray, Lord, lead us not into temptation.