出埃及記 14:24 註釋：Rashi, Rashbam, Sforno & Or HaChaim

באשמרת הבקר IN THE MORNING WATCH — The three divisions of the night are each called an אשמורה “a watch” (Berakhot 3b), and that which immediately precedes the morning is called “the morning watch”. I am of opinion that because the night is divided for the watches (משמרות) of the song of the ministering angels — company after company — into three divisions, therefore each division of the night is termed, for all purposes, an אשמרת (another form of משמר the angel’s watch), and this is what Onkelos has in mind when he translates אשמרת by מטרת.

בעמוד אש, at the column of fire as well as at the pillar of cloud accompanied by the sounds of hail and thunder as described in Samuel I 7,10.

וישקף ה' אל מחנה מצרים בעמוד אש וענן, the two pillars which were moving halfway between the Egyptians and the Israelites, He now brought much closer to the Egyptian camp.

‎ וישקף means HE LOOKED, as much as to say, He turned towards them to destroy them (cf. Rashi on Genesis 18:16), and its rendering in the Targum, ואסתכי, is also an expression denoting looking, just as he translates (Numbers 23:14), “the field of the watchers (צפים)” by “the field of ,סכותא” which denotes “looking”.