¹ tn Heb “Those that went in, male and female from all flesh they went in.”

² tn Heb “Isaac his son, the son of eight days.” The name “Isaac” is repeated in the translation for clarity.

³ sn Just as God had commanded him to do. With the birth of the promised child, Abraham obeyed the Lord by both naming (Gen 17:19) and circumcising Isaac (17:12).

⁴ tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”

⁵ tn Heb “in the going out of her life, for she was dying.” Rachel named the child with her dying breath.

⁶ sn The name Ben-Oni means “son of my suffering.” It is ironic that Rachel’s words to Jacob in Gen 30:1, “Give me children or I’ll die,” take a different turn here, for it was having the child that brought about her death.

⁷ tn The disjunctive clause is contrastive.

sn His father called him Benjamin. There was a preference for giving children good or positive names in the ancient world, and “son of my suffering” would not do (see the incident in 1 Chr 4:9-10), because it would be a reminder of the death of Rachel (in this connection, see also D. Daube, “The Night of Death,” HTR 61 [1968]: 629-32). So Jacob named him Benjamin, which means “son of the [or “my”] right hand.” The name Benjamin appears in the Mari texts. There have been attempts to connect this name to the resident tribe listed at Mari, “sons of the south” (since the term “right hand” can also mean “south” in Hebrew), but this assumes a different reading of the story. See J. Muilenburg, “The Birth of Benjamin,” JBL 75 (1956): 194-201.

⁸ tn Heb “and they”; the referent (Joseph’s brothers) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁹ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁰ tn Heb “to direct before him to Goshen.”