Genesis 28:2-4

28:2 Leave immediately 1  for Paddan Aram! Go to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and find yourself a wife there, among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. 28:3 May the sovereign God 2  bless you! May he make you fruitful and give you a multitude of descendants! 3  Then you will become 4  a large nation. 5  28:4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing he gave to Abraham 6  so that you may possess the land 7  God gave to Abraham, the land where you have been living as a temporary resident.” 8 

1 tn Heb “Arise! Go!” The first of the two imperatives is adverbial and stresses the immediacy of the departure.

2 tn Heb “El Shaddai.” See the extended note on the phrase “sovereign God” in Gen 17:1.

3 tn Heb “and make you fruitful and multiply you.” See Gen 17:6, 20 for similar terminology.

4 tn The perfect verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here indicates consequence. The collocation הָיָה + preposition לְ (hayah + lÿ) means “become.”

5 tn Heb “an assembly of peoples.”

6 tn Heb “and may he give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you.” The name “Abraham” is an objective genitive here; this refers to the blessing that God gave to Abraham.

7 tn The words “the land” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

8 tn Heb “the land of your sojournings,” that is, the land where Jacob had been living as a resident alien, as his future descendants would after him.