13 August 2022 draft-bible
2. the one who will inherit my estate. Hebrew ben-mešeq beiti, a difficult phrase. The big problem with giving it a meaning is that the word mešeq appears nowhere outside this verse, making its meaning hard to pin down. In addition, the three-letter combination mšq appears again just three words later in the word ‘Damascus’ (Hebrew dammeśeq), which in turn appears in a strangely constructed name. Altogether, this weirdness suggests that something may have gone wrong at some point in the copying of this verse.
3. Damascus Eliezer. Hebrew dammeśeq ʾeliʿezer. This is often translates as “Eliezer of Damascus”, but that would be ʾeliʿezer dammeśeq, and even that would be on the doubtful assumption that a construct phrase can be formed from two proper nouns.
5. And he brought him. WEB supplies the explicit subject, “Yahweh”, who is not explicitly named in the Hebrew.
5. to Abram (WEB). Hebrew "to him".
9. take. Hebrew laqaḥ. So also in verse 10.
12. a horror, a great darkness. The WEB adds an ‘and’, perhaps out of a feeling that something is wrong with the ASV’s ‘a horror of great darkness’. And there is indeed something wrong with the ASV’s rendering. It proceeds as if the Hebrew were ʾeimat ḥašekah gedolah, ‘a horror of great darkness’ rather than ʾeima__h ḥašekah gedolah, ‘a horror, a great darkness’.
13. be foreigners. Hebrew ger yihyeh. A ger, in the Bible, is something like a ‘resident alien’ – a person living somewhere other than his native country. In this case, the reference is to the time the Israelites would spend in Egypt.
14. possessions. Hebrew rekuš, which according to BDB refers to ‘moveable possessions of all kinds’. If that is the case ‘possessions’ seems a bit closer to the mark than a more abstract term like ‘wealth’.
15. you will go to your fathers. A biblical idiom for dying.
16. Amorite. Here this is a general term for the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan.
16. complete. The idea is that the conquests of Moses and Joshua and the displacement of the indigenous peoples that accompany them are justified by the bad deeds of the indigenous. Their evil deeds have apparently not yet attained a critical mass sufficient to justify their destruction, but in a few more generations they will.
19. Kenite, etc. These words are in the singular in Hebrew, although they all collectively refer to ethnic groups. The only plural word in the list is Rephaim. Perhaps the author does not think of the Rephaim as one ethnic group like all the others.
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