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Ki Tisa (translation)
And God said to Moshe: write for yourself these words, that(?) upon these words I cut [0] a covenant with you and with Israel. And he was there with God forty days and forty nights; bread he did not eat and water he did not drink; and he [1] wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, [the] ten words. [2]
And it was in Moshe's coming-down from Mount Sinai, two tablets of the testimony [3] in the hand of Moshe, when(?) he came down from the mountain, and Moshe did not know that rays of light [were on] his face, in [on account of?] his talking with him [God]. And Aharon and all the children of Israel saw Moshe, and here [were] rays of light [from] his face, and they feared and they shrunk [4] from him. And Moshe called to them "return", and to him [went] Aharon and the princes of the people, and Moshe spoke to them. And after this all the children of Israel approached, and he commanded them all that God said to him on Mount Sinai. And [something] [5] Moshe would speak to them he gave upon his face a veil (that is, he covered his face with a veil). And [when] Moshe came before God to speak to him he removed the veil until he departed and spoke to the children of Israel what he had been commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moshe, that rays of light [were] on the face of Moshe, and Moshe caused he veil to return [6] upon his face until he went to speak to Him.
[0] It's not clear in English, but "I cut a covenant with you" is in the
past tense. The covenant has already been made; these are just
implementation details.
[1] The p'shat, the plain reading, of the text is that Moshe wrote on the tablets; the subject isn't explicit here but in the first verse of this passage God tells Moshe "write for yourself". Tradition wants to understand the unstated "he" as God, but I'm not sure how it's reasoned. (For me taking divine dictation is sufficient, but some object to this.) Coincidentally, just last night I borrowed (and have not yet started reading) Who Wrote the Bible?, which might have things to say about this.
[2] "aseret ha-d'varim", or the ten commandments. The p'shat does not have the entire torah being written on the two tablets, though the torah clearly places the teaching of laws beyond the ten commandments during Moshe's time on the mountain and, again, tradition holds that the entire torah was written down on Sinai.
[3] "testimony": 'eidut, as opposed to b'rit (covenant). An 'eid is a witness.
[4] "shrunk": migeshet. I'm taking a translation's word for it; either this isn't in my dictionary or I couldn't break it down correctly.
[5] [something]: vay'khal Moshe (m'daber itam etc). There's a root letter missing from the first word, I think, and it's throwing me because I think I should know the word anyway. (vav-yud-chaf-lamed)
[6] "caused the veil to return": v'heishiv. "He returned" would have been "shavah" or something close to that. I'm inferring the causitive (hif'il) here even though the first vowel is tzere and not chiriq; is that right?
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4- Unsure how much of this will be things you already know. The mem at the beginning and the taf at the end are possible drop out letters, leaving gimmel and shin as the only definites. I'd try: gimmel shin taf, mem gimmel shin (unlikely). After those, i'd consider a drop out first letter (more likely with a prefix, as here), such as nun. Next a drop out yud or vuv in the middle. Lastly, a drop out final letter, heh or yud.
5- the only letters here likely to frop out are the first two. Thus kuf-hey-lamed is your root.
6-because the letter which dropped out was from the middle (a vuv, of the root shin vuv bet), the vowel became a tzere. May also relate to the first letter being a gutteral which cannot take a dagesh.
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5: Sigh. Bitten by the imprecision of transliteration. It's a khaf, not a kuf-hei.
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