Discovery BoxGenesis 8:4 
Context8:4 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat. 1
Genesis 11:5
Context11:5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people 2 had started 3 building.
Genesis 25:29
Context25:29 Now Jacob cooked some stew, 4 and when Esau came in from the open fields, he was famished.
Genesis 38:30
Context38:30 Afterward his brother came out – the one who had the scarlet thread on his hand – and he was named Zerah. 5
Genesis 41:50
Context41:50 Two sons were born to Joseph before the famine came. 6 Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, was their mother. 7
Genesis 41:57
Context41:57 People from every country 8 came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain because the famine was severe throughout the earth.
Genesis 45:25
Context45:25 So they went up from Egypt and came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan. 9
Genesis 46:28
Context46:28 Jacob 10 sent Judah before him to Joseph to accompany him to Goshen. 11 So they came to the land of Goshen.
Genesis 50:18
Context50:18 Then his brothers also came and threw themselves down before him; they said, “Here we are; we are your slaves.”
1 tn Heb “on the mountains of Ararat.” Obviously a boat (even one as large as the ark) cannot rest on multiple mountains. Perhaps (1) the preposition should be translated “among,” or (2) the plural “mountains” should be understood in the sense of “mountain range” (see E. A. Speiser, Genesis [AB], 53). A more probable option (3) is that the plural indicates an indefinite singular, translated “one of the mountains” (see GKC 400 §124.o).
sn Ararat is the Hebrew name for Urartu, the name of a mountainous region located north of Mesopotamia in modern day eastern Turkey. See E. M. Yamauchi, Foes from the Northern Frontier (SBA), 29-32; G. J. Wenham, Genesis (WBC), 1:184-85; C. Westermann, Genesis, 1:443-44.
2 tn Heb “the sons of man.” The phrase is intended in this polemic to portray the builders as mere mortals, not the lesser deities that the Babylonians claimed built the city.
3 tn The Hebrew text simply has בָּנוּ (banu), but since v. 8 says they left off building the city, an ingressive idea (“had started building”) should be understood here.
4 sn Jacob cooked some stew. There are some significant words and wordplays in this story that help clarify the points of the story. The verb “cook” is זִיד (zid), which sounds like the word for “hunter” (צַיִד, tsayid). This is deliberate, for the hunter becomes the hunted in this story. The word זִיד means “to cook, to boil,” but by the sound play with צַיִד it comes to mean “set a trap by cooking.” The usage of the word shows that it can also have the connotation of acting presumptuously (as in boiling over). This too may be a comment on the scene. For further discussion of the rhetorical devices in the Jacob narratives, see J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis (SSN).
5 sn Perhaps the child was named Zerah because of the scarlet thread. Though the Hebrew word used for “scarlet thread” in v. 28 is not related to the name Zerah, there is a related root in Babylonian and western Aramaic that means “scarlet” or “scarlet thread.” In Hebrew the name appears to be derived from a root meaning “to shine.” The name could have originally meant something like “shining one” or “God has shined.” Zerah became the head of a tribe (Num 26:20) from whom Achan descended (Josh 7:1).
6 tn Heb “before the year of the famine came.”
7 tn Heb “gave birth for him.”
8 tn Heb “all the earth,” which refers here (by metonymy) to the people of the earth. Note that the following verb is plural in form, indicating that the inhabitants of the earth are in view.
9 tn Heb “and they entered the land of Canaan to their father.”
10 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
11 tn Heb “to direct before him to Goshen.”
