⁵ sn The deceit is in not making her his wife or concubine as the arrangement had stipulated.

¹ tn Or “after the manner of” (KJV, ASV); NRSV “shall deal with her as with a daughter.”

¹ tn Heb “and if unpleasant (רָעָה, raʿah) in the eyes of her master.”

³ tn “each man is to request from his neighbor and each woman from her neighbor.”

¹ tn Heb “her”; the referent (Dinah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹ tn Heb “and it happened in the evening that he took Leah his daughter and brought her.”

¹ tn Heb “and the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah.”

¹ sn Rebekah, unlike Sarah, was not actually her husband’s sister.

³ tn Heb “and he took Rebekah and she became his wife and he loved her.”

¹ tn Heb “her”; the referent has been specified here in the translation for clarity.

¹ tn Heb “her”; the referent (Rebekah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹ tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) focuses on her immediate situation: “Here you are pregnant.”

⁴ tn Heb “her”; the referent (Hagar) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ sn Scholars offer three interpretations of her figurative request: (1) The Beloved desires her Lover to embrace her breasts, like a gazelle romping over mountains (mountains are figurative); (2) The Beloved entreats her Lover to leave and go back over the hills from whence he had journeyed (mountains are literal); and (3) As her Lover prepares to leave her country village, the Beloved asks him to return to her again in the same way he arrived, like a gazelle bounding over the mountains in 2:8-10 (mountains are literal).

⁵ sn This statement is a euphemism: the Beloved wished to give her breasts to Solomon, like a mother would give her breast to her nursing baby. This is the climactic point of the “lover’s wish song” of Song 8:1-2. The Beloved wished that Solomon was her little brother still nursing on her mother’s breast. The Beloved, who had learned from her mother’s example, would bring him inside their home and she would give him her breast: “I would give you spiced wine to drink, the nectar of my pomegranates.” The phrase “my pomegranates” is a euphemism for her breasts. Rather than providing milk from her breasts for a nursing baby, the Beloved’s breasts would provide the sensual delight of “spiced wine” and “nectar” for her lover.

¹ tn Heb “You must not uncover the nakedness of both a woman and her daughter; the daughter of her son and the daughter of her daughter you must not take to uncover her nakedness.” Translating “her” as “them” provides consistency in the English. In this kind of context, “take” means to “take in marriage” (cf. also v. 18). The LXX and Syriac have “their nakedness,” referring to the nakedness of the woman’s granddaughters, rather than the nakedness of the woman herself.

³ tn Heb “I will wall in her wall.” The cognate accusative construction וְגָדַרְתִּי אֶת־גְּדֵרָהּ (v^egadarti ʾet-g^ederah, “I will wall in her wall”) is an emphatic literary device. The third person feminine singular suffix on the noun functions as a dative of disadvantage: “as a wall against her” (A. B. Davidson, Hebrew Syntax, 3, remark 2). The expression means: “I will build a wall to bar her way” (cf. KJV “I will make a wall”; TEV “I will build a wall”; RSV, NASB, NRSV “I will build a wall against her”; NLT “I will fence her in”).

¹ sn Ultimately, the only cure for her love-sickness is her beloved. The ancient Near Eastern love songs frequently portray the embrace of the lover as the only cure for the speaker’s love-sickness. For example, one Egyptian love song reads: “She will make the doctors unnecessary because she knows my sickness” (Papyrus Harris 4:11). Similarly, “My salvation is her coming in from outside; when I see her, I will be healthy. When she opens her eye, my body is young; when she speaks, I will be strong. When I embrace her, she exorcises evil from me” (Papyrus Chester Beatty, C5:1-2).

⁴ tn Grk “they asked him about her.” It is clear from the context that they were concerned about her physical condition. The verb “to help” in the translation makes this explicit.

² tn The words “her child” are not in the Greek text, but have been supplied to clarify what was being delivered. The wording here is like Luke 1:57. Grk “the days for her to give birth were fulfilled.”