28:6 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him off to Paddan Aram to find a wife there. 26 As he blessed him, 27 Isaac commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.” 28
21:8 The child grew and was weaned. Abraham prepared 31 a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. 32
26:16 Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Leave us and go elsewhere, 35 for you have become much more powerful 36 than we are.”
26:19 When Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well with fresh flowing 37 water there,
27:18 He went to his father and said, “My father!” Isaac 39 replied, “Here I am. Which are you, my son?” 40
28:1 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman! 41
25:21 Isaac prayed to 47 the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.
26:12 When Isaac planted in that land, he reaped in the same year a hundred times what he had sown, 53 because the Lord blessed him. 54
26:32 That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. “We’ve found water,” they reported. 59
27:30 Isaac had just finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely left 67 his father’s 68 presence, when his brother Esau returned from the hunt. 69
27:39 So his father Isaac said to him,
“Indeed, 70 your home will be
away from the richness 71 of the earth,
and away from the dew of the sky above.
46:1 So Israel began his journey, taking with him all that he had. 76 When he came to Beer Sheba 77 he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.
1 tn The Hebrew text adds “and said.” This is redundant and has not been translated for stylistic reasons.
2 tn Heb “Here I am” (cf. Gen 22:1).
3 tn Heb “and he said, ‘Here is the fire and the wood.’” The referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity. Here and in the following verse the order of the introductory clauses and the direct discourse has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.
4 tn Heb “her”; the referent has been specified here in the translation for clarity.
5 tn Heb “Rebekah”; here the proper name was replaced by the pronoun (“her”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.
6 tn Heb “and he took Rebekah and she became his wife and he loved her.”
7 tn Heb “after his mother.” This must refer to Sarah’s death.
8 tn Heb “Surely, look!” See N. H. Snaith, “The meaning of Hebrew ‘ak,” VT 14 (1964): 221-25.
9 tn Heb “Because I said, ‘Lest I die on account of her.’” Since the verb “said” probably means “said to myself” (i.e., “thought”) here, the direct discourse in the Hebrew statement has been converted to indirect discourse in the translation. In addition the simple prepositional phrase “on account of her” has been clarified in the translation as “to get her” (cf. v. 7).
10 tn Heb “he returned and dug,” meaning “he dug again” or “he reopened.”
11 tn Heb “that they dug.” Since the subject is indefinite, the verb is translated as passive.
12 tn Heb “and the Philistines had stopped them up.” This clause explains why Isaac had to reopen them.
13 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
14 tn Heb “them”; the referent (the wells) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Heb “called names to them according to the names that his father called them.”
16 tn The Hebrew verb translated “quarreled” describes a conflict that often has legal ramifications.
17 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
18 tn Heb “and he called the name of the well.”
19 sn The name Esek means “argument” in Hebrew. The following causal clause explains that Isaac gave the well this name as a reminder of the conflict its discovery had created. In the Hebrew text there is a wordplay, for the name is derived from the verb translated “argued.”
20 tn The words “about it” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
21 tn Heb “and he said”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
22 tn Heb “Bring near to me and I will eat of the wild game, my son.” Following the imperative, the cohortative with the prefixed conjunction indicates purpose or result.
23 tn Heb “so that my soul may bless you.” The presence of נַפְשִׁי (nafshi, “my soul”) as subject emphasizes Isaac’s heartfelt desire to do this. The conjunction indicates that the ritual meal must be first eaten before the formal blessing may be given.
24 tn Heb “and he brought”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
25 tn Heb “and he drank”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
26 tn Heb “to take for himself from there a wife.”
27 tn The infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffix form a temporal clause.
28 tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”
29 tn Heb “Isaac his son, the son of eight days.” The name “Isaac” is repeated in the translation for clarity.
30 sn Just as God had commanded him to do. With the birth of the promised child, Abraham obeyed the
31 tn Heb “made.”
32 sn Children were weaned closer to the age of two or three in the ancient world, because infant mortality was high. If an infant grew to this stage, it was fairly certain he or she would live. Such an event called for a celebration, especially for parents who had waited so long for a child.
33 tn Heb “for to my country and my relatives you must go.”
34 tn Heb “and take.”
35 tn Heb “Go away from us.”
36 sn You have become much more powerful. This explanation for the expulsion of Isaac from Philistine territory foreshadows the words used later by the Egyptians to justify their oppression of Israel (see Exod 1:9).
37 tn Heb “living.” This expression refers to a well supplied by subterranean streams (see Song 4:15).
38 tn The disjunctive clause is circumstantial, expressing the reason for his question.
39 tn Heb “and he said”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
40 sn Which are you, my son? Isaac’s first question shows that the deception is going to require more subterfuge than Rebekah had anticipated. Jacob will have to pull off the deceit.
41 tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”
42 tn Heb “the sons of the concubines who [belonged] to Abraham.”
43 tn Heb “And he sent them away from upon Isaac his son, while he was still living, eastward to the land of the east.”
44 sn The cave of Machpelah was the place Abraham had purchased as a burial place for his wife Sarah (Gen 23:17-18).
45 tn Heb “And Isaac was the son of forty years when he took Rebekah.”
46 sn Some valuable information is provided here. We learn here that Isaac married thirty-five years before Abraham died, that Rebekah was barren for twenty years, and that Abraham would have lived to see Jacob and Esau begin to grow up. The death of Abraham was recorded in the first part of the chapter as a “tidying up” of one generation before beginning the account of the next.
47 tn The Hebrew verb עָתַר (’atar), translated “prayed [to]” here, appears in the story of God’s judgment on Egypt in which Moses asked the
48 tn The disjunctive clause describes an important circumstance accompanying the birth. Whereas Esau was passive at birth, Jacob was active.
49 tn Heb “And he called his name Jacob.” Some ancient witnesses read “they called his name Jacob” (see v. 25). In either case the subject is indefinite.
sn The name Jacob is a play on the Hebrew word for “heel” (עָקֵב, ’aqev). The name (since it is a verb) probably means something like “may he protect,” that is, as a rearguard, dogging the heels. It did not have a negative connotation until Esau redefined it. This name was probably chosen because of the immediate association with the incident of grabbing the heel. After receiving such an oracle, the parents would have preserved in memory almost every detail of the unusual births.
50 tn Heb “the son of sixty years.”
51 sn Do not go down to Egypt. The words echo Gen 12:10, which reports that “Abram went down to Egypt,” but state the opposite.
52 tn Heb “say to you.”
53 tn Heb “a hundredfold.”
54 tn This final clause explains why Isaac had such a bountiful harvest.
55 tn Heb “called in the name of.” The expression refers to worshiping the
56 tn Heb “and they dug there, the servants of Isaac, a well.”
57 tn Heb “and they got up early and they swore an oath, a man to his brother.”
58 tn Heb “and they went from him in peace.”
59 tn Heb “and they said to him, ‘We have found water.’” The order of the introductory clause and the direct discourse has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.
60 tn Heb “What is this?” The enclitic pronoun “this” adds emphasis to the question, which is comparable to the English rhetorical question, “How in the world?”
61 tn Heb “you hastened to find.” In translation the infinitive becomes the main verb and the first verb becomes adverbial.
62 tn Heb “caused to meet before me.”
63 tn Heb “and he said, ‘Because the
64 tn Following the imperative, the cohortative (with prefixed conjunction) indicates purpose or result.
65 tn Heb “Are you this one, Esau, my son, or not?” On the use of the interrogative particle here, see BDB 210 s.v. הֲ.
66 tn Heb “and he blessed him.” The referents of the pronouns “he” (Isaac) and “him” (Jacob) have been specified in the translation for clarity.
67 tn The use of the infinitive absolute before the finite form of the verb makes the construction emphatic.
68 tn Heb “the presence of Isaac his father.” The repetition of the proper name (“Isaac”) was
69 tn Heb “and Esau his brother came from his hunt.”
70 tn Heb “look.”
71 tn Heb “from the fatness.”
72 tn The Hebrew verb translated “gave” refers to the Abrahamic promise of the land. However, the actual possession of that land lay in the future. The decree of the
73 tn Heb “and to your offspring after you.”
74 tn Heb “and Isaac expired and died and he was gathered to his people.” In the ancient Israelite view he joined his deceased ancestors in Sheol, the land of the dead.
75 tn Heb “old and full of years.”
76 tn Heb “and Israel journeyed, and all that was his.”
77 sn Beer Sheba. See Gen 21:31; 28:10.