28:6 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him off to Paddan Aram to find a wife there. 6 As he blessed him, 7 Isaac commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.” 8
1 tn Heb “from upon the surface of the ground.”
2 sn I must hide from your presence. The motif of hiding from the
3 tn The disjunctive clause calls attention to the “uncircumcised male” and what will happen to him.
4 tn Heb “that person will be cut off.” The words “that person” have not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
sn The meaning of “cut off” has been discussed at great length. An entire tractate in the Mishnah is devoted to this subject (tractate Keritot). Being ostracized from the community is involved at the least, but it is not certain whether this refers to the death penalty.
5 tn Heb “he has broken my covenant.” The noun בְּרִית (bÿrit) here refers to the obligation required by God in conjunction with the covenantal agreement. For the range of meaning of the term, see the note on the word “requirement” in v. 9.
6 tn Heb “to take for himself from there a wife.”
7 tn The infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffix form a temporal clause.
8 tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”
9 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the shepherds) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn Heb “Laban, the brother of his mother” (twice in this verse).
11 tn Heb “Jacob.” The proper name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation for stylistic reasons.
12 tn Heb “drew near, approached.”
13 tn Heb “Laban, the brother of his mother.” The text says nothing initially about the beauty of Rachel. But the reader is struck by the repetition of “Laban the brother of his mother.” G. J. Wenham is no doubt correct when he observes that Jacob’s primary motive at this stage is to ingratiate himself with Laban (Genesis [WBC], 2:231).
14 tn Heb “Why did you hide in order to flee?” The verb “hide” and the infinitive “to flee” form a hendiadys, the infinitive becoming the main verb and the other the adverb: “flee secretly.”
15 tn Heb “and steal me.”
16 tn Heb “And [why did] you not tell me so I could send you off with joy and with songs, with a tambourine and with a harp?”