² sn The imagery here appears to be that of treating the wife as an equal heir with the sons and of giving her the best piece of property.

⁵ tc The LXX adds this embellishment to complete the thought: “Whoever puts away a good wife puts away good, and whoever keeps an adulteress is foolish and ungodly.”

¹ sn The metaphor of the fruitful vine pictures the wife as fertile; she will give her husband numerous children (see the next line).

¹ tn Heb “he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab did, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife.”

² tn The Hebrew text reads “Ephrathah” here, but see v. 19, which mentions “Ephrath” as the wife of Caleb and mother of Hur.

¹ tn Heb “he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab did, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife.”

¹ tn Heb “Say to Solomon the king, for he will not turn back your face, that he might give to me Abishag the Shunammite for a wife.”

² tc The LXX adds here the following words: “And she became a wife to Rehoboam the son of Solomon and bore to him Abia.”

² sn That Hebrew slave. Now, when speaking to her husband, Potiphar’s wife refers to Joseph as a Hebrew slave, a very demeaning description.

² sn A Hebrew man. Potiphar’s wife raises the ethnic issue when talking to her servants about what their boss had done.

³ tn Heb “If Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, why to me life?”

¹ sn The cave of Machpelah was the place Abraham had purchased as a burial place for his wife Sarah (Gen 23:17-18).

¹ tn Heb “but to the house of my father you must go and to my family and you must take a wife for my son.”

¹ tn The disjunctive clause gives information that is important but parenthetical to the narrative. Rebekah would become the wife of Isaac (Gen 24:15).

² tn Heb “And Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all which was his, and Lot with him, to the Negev.”

² tn The idiom “listen to the voice of” often means “obey.” The man “obeyed” his wife and in the process disobeyed God.

¹ tn Or “the husband is the head of his wife.” The same Greek words translated “man” and “woman” can mean, as determined by context, “husband” and “wife” respectively. Such an approach is followed by NAB, TEV, NRSV, and NLT (with some variations).

³ tc Several mss (A C K W Ψ 33 565 579 1424 2542 al bo) read τῆς γυναικὸς Φιλίππου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ (tēs gunaikos Philippou tou adelphou autou, “the wife of his brother Philip”), specifying whose wife Herodias was. The addition of “Philip,” however, is an assimilation to Matt 14:3 and is lacking in the better witnesses.

¹ sn Hired flute players were a standard feature at Jewish funerals in the first century. According to the Mishnah (m. Ketubot 4:4) the husband was responsible to provide flute players for his wife’s funeral: “Even the poorest man in Israel should not hire fewer than two flutes and one professional wailing woman.”

² tn Heb “the contentions of a wife” (so KJV, NASB); NAB “the nagging of a wife.” The genitive could be interpreted (1) as genitive of source or subjective genitive—she is quarreling; or (2) it could be a genitive of specification, making the word “contentions” a modifier, as in the present translation.