Genesis 15:16

15:16 In the fourth generation ¹  your descendants ²  will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.” ³ 

Genesis 18:14

18:14 Is anything impossible ⁴  for the Lord? I will return to you when the season comes round again and Sarah will have a son.” ⁵ 

Genesis 31:3

31:3 The Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers ⁶  and to your relatives. I will be with you.” ⁷ 

Genesis 43:2

43:2 When they finished eating the grain they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, “Return, buy us a little more food.”

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¹ sn The term generation is being used here in its widest sense to refer to a full life span. When the chronological factors are considered and the genealogies tabulated, there are four hundred years of bondage. This suggests that in this context a generation is equivalent to one hundred years.

² tn Heb “they”; the referent (“your descendants”) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “is not yet complete.”

sn The sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit. The justice of God is apparent. He will wait until the Amorites are fully deserving of judgment before he annihilates them and gives the land to Israel.

⁴ tn The Hebrew verb פָּלָא (pala’) means “to be wonderful, to be extraordinary, to be surpassing, to be amazing.”

⁵ sn Sarah will have a son. The passage brings God’s promise into clear focus. As long as it was a promise for the future, it really could be believed without much involvement. But now, when it seemed so impossible from the human standpoint, when the Lord fixed an exact date for the birth of the child, the promise became rather overwhelming to Abraham and Sarah. But then this was the Lord of creation, the one they had come to trust. The point of these narratives is that the creation of Abraham’s offspring, which eventually became Israel, is no less a miraculous work of creation than the creation of the world itself.

⁶ tn Or perhaps “ancestors” (so NRSV), although the only “ancestors” Jacob had there were his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.

⁷ sn I will be with you. Though Laban was no longer “with him,” the Lord promised to be.