50:15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph bears a grudge and wants to repay 7 us in full 8 for all the harm 9 we did to him?”
1 tn Heb “Now the Valley of Siddim [was] pits, pits of tar.” This parenthetical disjunctive clause emphasizes the abundance of tar pits in the area through repetition of the noun “pits.”
sn The word for “tar” (or “bitumen”) occurs earlier in the story of the building of the tower in Babylon (see Gen 11:3).
2 tn Or “they were defeated there.” After a verb of motion the Hebrew particle שָׁם (sham) with the directional heh (שָׁמָּה, shammah) can mean “into it, therein” (BDB 1027 s.v. שָׁם).
3 tn Heb “the rest.”
4 sn The reference to the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah must mean the kings along with their armies. Most of them were defeated in the valley, but some of them escaped to the hills.
5 tn Heb “in its weight.”
6 tn Heb “brought it back in our hand.”
7 tn The imperfect tense could be a simple future; it could also have a desiderative nuance.
8 tn The infinitive absolute makes the statement emphatic, “repay in full.”
9 tn Or “evil.”