“Blessed be Abram by 1 the Most High God,
Creator 2 of heaven and earth. 3
37:21 When Reuben heard this, he rescued Joseph 5 from their hands, 6 saying, 7 “Let’s not take his life!” 8
1 tn The preposition לְ (lamed) introduces the agent after the passive participle.
2 tn Some translate “possessor of heaven and earth” (cf. NASB). But cognate evidence from Ugaritic indicates that there were two homonymic roots ָקנָה (qanah), one meaning “to create” (as in Gen 4:1) and the other “to obtain, to acquire, to possess.” While “possessor” would fit here, “creator” is the more likely due to the collocation with “heaven and earth.”
3 tn The terms translated “heaven” and “earth” are both objective genitives after the participle in construct.
4 tn Heb “And he said, ‘No, but you did laugh.’” The referent (the
5 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Joseph) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
6 sn From their hands. The instigators of this plot may have been the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah (see v. 2).
7 tn Heb “and he said.”
8 tn Heb “we must not strike him down [with respect to] life.”
9 sn The name Ephraim (אֶפְרַיִם, ’efrayim), a form of the Hebrew verb פָּרָה (parah), means “to bear fruit.” The theme of fruitfulness is connected with this line of the family from Rachel (30:2) on down (see Gen 49:22, Deut 33:13-17, and Hos 13:15). But there is some difficulty with the name “Ephraim” itself. It appears to be a dual, for which F. Delitzsch simply said it meant “double fruitfulness” (New Commentary on Genesis, 2:305). G. J. Spurrell suggested it was a diphthongal pronunciation of a name ending in -an or -am, often thought to be dual suffixes (Notes on the text of the book of Genesis, 334). Many, however, simply connect the name to the territory of Ephraim and interpret it to be “fertile land” (C. Fontinoy, “Les noms de lieux en -ayim dans la Bible,” UF 3 [1971]: 33-40). The dual would then be an old locative ending. There is no doubt that the name became attached to the land in which the tribe settled, and it is possible that is where the dual ending came from, but in this story it refers to Joseph’s God-given fruitfulness.
10 tn The word “saying” has been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
11 tn Or “for.”