1:14 God said, “Let there be lights 1 in the expanse 2 of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs 3 to indicate seasons and days and years,
3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about 4 in the orchard at the breezy time 5 of the day, and they hid 6 from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard.
17:23 Abraham took his son Ishmael and every male in his household (whether born in his house or bought with money) 7 and circumcised them 8 on that very same day, just as God had told him to do.
47:26 So Joseph made it a statute, 16 which is in effect 17 to this day throughout the land of Egypt: One-fifth belongs to Pharaoh. Only the land of the priests did not become Pharaoh’s.
48:15 Then he blessed Joseph and said,
“May the God before whom my fathers
Abraham and Isaac walked –
the God who has been my shepherd 18
all my life long to this day,
50:10 When they came to the threshing floor of Atad 19 on the other side of the Jordan, they mourned there with very great and bitter sorrow. 20 There Joseph observed a seven day period of mourning for his father.
1 sn Let there be lights. Light itself was created before the light-bearers. The order would not seem strange to the ancient Hebrew mind that did not automatically link daylight with the sun (note that dawn and dusk appear to have light without the sun).
2 tn The language describing the cosmos, which reflects a prescientific view of the world, must be interpreted as phenomenal, describing what appears to be the case. The sun and the moon are not in the sky (below the clouds), but from the viewpoint of a person standing on the earth, they appear that way. Even today we use similar phenomenological expressions, such as “the sun is rising” or “the stars in the sky.”
3 tn The text has “for signs and for seasons and for days and years.” It seems likely from the meanings of the words involved that “signs” is the main idea, followed by two categories, “seasons” and “days and years.” This is the simplest explanation, and one that matches vv. 11-13. It could even be rendered “signs for the fixed seasons, that is [explicative vav (ו)] days and years.”
sn Let them be for signs. The point is that the sun and the moon were important to fix the days for the seasonal celebrations for the worshiping community.
4 tn The Hitpael participle of הָלָךְ (halakh, “to walk, to go”) here has an iterative sense, “moving” or “going about.” While a translation of “walking about” is possible, it assumes a theophany, the presence of the
5 tn The expression is traditionally rendered “cool of the day,” because the Hebrew word רוּחַ (ruakh) can mean “wind.” U. Cassuto (Genesis: From Adam to Noah, 152-54) concludes after lengthy discussion that the expression refers to afternoon when it became hot and the sun was beginning to decline. J. J. Niehaus (God at Sinai [SOTBT], 155-57) offers a different interpretation of the phrase, relating יוֹם (yom, usually understood as “day”) to an Akkadian cognate umu (“storm”) and translates the phrase “in the wind of the storm.” If Niehaus is correct, then God is not pictured as taking an afternoon stroll through the orchard, but as coming in a powerful windstorm to confront the man and woman with their rebellion. In this case קוֹל יְהוָה (qol yÿhvah, “sound of the
6 tn The verb used here is the Hitpael, giving the reflexive idea (“they hid themselves”). In v. 10, when Adam answers the
7 tn Heb “Ishmael his son and all born in his house and all bought with money, every male among the men of the house of Abraham.”
8 tn Heb “circumcised the flesh of their foreskin.” The Hebrew expression is somewhat pleonastic and has been simplified in the translation.
9 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn Heb “the day is great.”
11 tn Heb “water the sheep and go and pasture [them].” The verbal forms are imperatives, but Jacob would hardly be giving direct orders to someone else’s shepherds. The nuance here is probably one of advice.
12 tn The imperfect verbal form indicates that this was a customary or typical action.
13 tn Heb “from my hand you exacted it.” The imperfect verbal form again indicates that this was a customary or typical action. The words “for every missing animal” are supplied in the translation for clarity; the following clause in Hebrew, “stolen by day or stolen by night,” probably means “stolen by wild beasts” and refers to the same animals “torn by wild beasts” in the previous clause, although it may refer to animals stolen by people. The translation used here, “missing,” is ambiguous enough to cover either eventuality.
14 sn On the use of the expression to this day, see B. S. Childs, “A Study of the Formula ‘Until This Day’,” JBL 82 (1963): 279-92.
15 tn Or “because the socket of Jacob’s hip was struck.” Some translations render this as an impersonal passive. On the translation of the word “struck” see the note on this term in v. 25.
16 tn On the term translated “statute” see P. Victor, “A Note on Hoq in the Old Testament,” VT 16 (1966): 358-61.
17 tn The words “which is in effect” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
18 tn Heb “shepherded me.” The verb has been translated as an English noun for stylistic reasons.
19 sn The location of the threshing floor of Atad is not certain. The expression the other side of the Jordan could refer to the eastern or western bank, depending on one’s perspective. However, it is commonly used in the OT for Transjordan. This would suggest that the entourage came up the Jordan Valley and crossed into the land at Jericho, just as the Israelites would in the time of Joshua.
20 tn Heb “and they mourned there [with] very great and heavy mourning.” The cognate accusative, as well as the two adjectives and the adverb, emphasize the degree of their sorrow.
21 tn Heb “you devised against me evil.”
22 tn Heb “God devised it for good in order to do, like this day, to preserve alive a great nation.”