Genesis 11:29

11:29 And Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, ¹  and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah; ²  she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

Genesis 30:26

30:26 Let me take my wives and my children whom I have acquired by working for you. ³  Then I’ll depart, ⁴  because you know how hard I’ve worked for you.” ⁵ 

Genesis 34:16

34:16 Then we will give ⁶  you our daughters to marry, ⁷  and we will take your daughters as wives for ourselves, and we will live among you and become one people.

Genesis 45:19

45:19 You are also commanded to say, ⁸  ‘Do this: Take for yourselves wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives. Bring your father and come.

Genesis 46:5

46:5 Then Jacob started out ⁹  from Beer Sheba, and the sons of Israel carried their father Jacob, their little children, and their wives in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent along to transport him.

Genesis 46:26

46:26 All the direct descendants of Jacob who went to Egypt with him were sixty-six in number. (This number does not include the wives of Jacob’s sons.) ¹⁰ 

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¹ sn The name Sarai (a variant spelling of “Sarah”) means “princess” (or “lady”). Sharratu was the name of the wife of the moon god Sin. The original name may reflect the culture out of which the patriarch was called, for the family did worship other gods in Mesopotamia.

² sn The name Milcah means “Queen.” But more to the point here is the fact that Malkatu was a title for Ishtar, the daughter of the moon god. If the women were named after such titles (and there is no evidence that this was the motivation for naming the girls “Princess” or “Queen”), that would not necessarily imply anything about the faith of the two women themselves.

³ tn Heb “give my wives and my children, for whom I have served you.” In one sense Laban had already “given” Jacob his two daughters as wives (Gen 29:21, 28). Here Jacob was asking for permission to take his own family along with him on the journey back to Canaan.

⁴ tn Following the imperative, the cohortative with the prefixed conjunction indicates purpose or result.

⁵ tn Heb “for you, you know my service [with] which I have served you.”

⁶ tn The perfect verbal form with the vav (ו) consecutive introduces the apodosis of the conditional sentence.

⁷ tn The words “to marry” (and the words “as wives” in the following clause) are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarity.

⁸ tn The words “to say” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁹ tn Heb “arose.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “All the people who went with Jacob to Egypt, the ones who came out of his body, apart from the wives of the sons of Jacob, all the people were sixty-six.”

sn The number sixty-six includes the seventy-one descendants (including Dinah) listed in vv. 8-25 minus Er and Onan (deceased), and Joseph, Manasseh, and Ephraim (already in Egypt).