16 August 2022 draft-bible
4. Hanoch. This is the same name, in Hebrew, as the name sometimes translated ‘Enoch’.
8. expired. Hebrew gawaʿ.
8. gathered to his kinsmen. A Hebrew idiom for death. If Abraham were gathered to ʿamo, one might go for the traditional translation ‘gathered to his people’. But he is gathered to ʿama(y)w, plural, and thus we must be dealing with the somewhat less common meaning of ʿam, ‘kinsman’ (see BDB).
9. near. Hebrew ʿal-pne. The ESV reads ‘east of’, NASB ‘facing’.
9. Hittite.
12. generations. As in 2:4.
13. in the order of their birth. Hebrew lᵉ-tolᵉdotam. Another interpretation is that of the CSB, ‘according to the family records’ (similarly the NET).
15. Hadad. So reads the WLC text and BHS1997. The KJV, following Bomberg, reads Hadar. On the manuscript evidence involved, I reproduce below a note from p. 36, Vol. I of Gilbert Burrington’s (1836) An Arrangement of the Genealogies in the Old Testament and Apocrypha.
“(t) Hadar. Nearly two hundred Heb. MSS., collated by Kennicott, and above a hundred by De-Rossi (see his Collat. And Append. p. 213 and Suppl. p. 5), read in Gen. xxv. 15, הדד Hadad, as the name is written in I. Chron. i. 30, in the Hebr. Text. This reading is also supported by a great number of printed editions, and some Targums, which the reader may find enumerated by De-Rossi, in his Var. lect. Vet. Test. Tom. I. p. 23. A few MSS. And printed editions read in i. Chron. I. 30, הדר Hadar; and thus the Malabric Pentateuch collated by Mr. T. Yates reads in Gen. xxv. 15. The Smaritan text and version, and two of De-Rossi’s MSS. read הדד, and two MSS., one printed edition, the Chaldee paraphrase, and some versions, collated by the same person, read in the same place הדר, and thus a third of De-Rossi’s MSS. read originally in i Chron. i. 30. See De-Rossi’s Var. lect. Vet. Test. Tom. i. p. viiii. Emend., and Tom. iv. p. 169. Compare also Bernard on Josephus, Jew. Ant. B. I. c. xii. p. 38.”
17. expired. Hebrew gawaʿ.
17. was gathered to his kinsmen. As in 25:8.
20. Aramean (both times). Hebrew ha-ʾarammi.
21. infertile. The Hebrew ʿaqarah, and its masculine counterpart ʿaqar (Deuteronomy 7:14) refer, as far as I can tell, only to humans or animals who are unable to reproduce. In this way it runs parallel to the English ‘infertile’, a relatively technical term for the same sort of thing. The word ‘barren’ also has the unfortunate meanings ‘bleak’ or ‘lifeless’, and I would prefer not to load up the English text with that sort of a word if the Hebrew text does not contain the same.
21. prayed. The Hebrew word, ʿatar, is used specifically for a prayer that involves a request. If the context did not already make it clear, it might be necessary to use a more specific word.
21. heard his prayer. The word is the niphal of ʿatar, and as a result it might be tempting simply to translate it as a simple passive – “Yahweh was prayed to”. And indeed this is more or less what the WEB and ASV do. But a survey of all the uses of this verb will show that it always specifically means ‘to listen to a prayer and to answer it’. In this case, “Yahweh heard his prayer” seems to capture the implication well, in a way that “was entreated” may not for today’s readers.
22. If it is like this, why do I [live]? The Hebrew is very difficult here, and this rendering is a common interpretation – according to Speiser it is the majority interpretation (Genesis, ad loc.). Driver, explaining the text’s most literal meaning, reads, “wherefore, then, am I?” (Genesis, 10th ed. 1916 [1904]). The NIV reads simply, “Why is this happening to me?”, and the ESV, NLT, NASB, CSB have similar readings, in which Rebekah expresses confusion about what she is experiencing, but makes no comment about whether she should go on living. Another sort is the NHEB reading “If all is well, why am I like this?” – and the NKJV reads similarly. And finally, the NET’s paraphrase, “If it is going to be like this, I’m not so sure I want to be pregnant!”
24. had fully come. Literally, ‘were full’.
25. red, like a hairy garment all over. In the Hebrew text, first comes ʾadmoni, ‘red’, then kullo, ‘all over’ (literally, ‘all of him’), and finally kᵉʾaderet śeʿar, ‘like a hairy garment’. It then becomes a question of grammar whether the term ‘all over’ is applied to ‘red’ or to ‘like a hairy garment’. A system of ‘accents’ in the Masoretic system subdivide sentences in ways that often give grammatical direction to the reader. In this case, they instruct the reader to read ‘all over’ with ‘like a hairy garment’. This is the reading followed by the ASV, which uses a comma between “red” and “all over” to make this clear. Unfortunately, while the ASV does manage to follow both the sense and the accents of the Masoretic Text, the downside of the ASV reading is that it contains awkward wording in today’s English. When a reader today sees the sequence of words ‘red all over like a hairy garment’, it is natural to attach ‘all over’ to ‘red’, and if a comma is inserted, it would be inserted after the word ‘over’.
It appears to me, unless the WEB is deliberately departing from the ASV and the Masoretic accents, that the WEB has misunderstood the ASV’s meaning and ‘corrected’ the text by moving the comma. The same thing appears to have happened in the Amplified Bible, which is another modern-English revision based on the ASV. In many other translations, the Masoretic division is maintained: the NIV, NLT, ESV, NKJV, NASB, CSB, HCSB, JPS (1917), NJPS, NAB, NRSV. Other than modernized ASV derivatives, the only English translations I have seen that read like the WEB are the NET and YLT.
26. Jacob. Hebrew yaʿaqob. The text here is making a play between Jacob’s name and the Hebrew word ʿaqeb, ‘heel’.
28. because he ate [his] game. Literally, ‘because game in his mouth’. The translation given here assumes that the ‘mouth’ is Isaac’s, but Alter raises the possibility that it is Esau’s mouth referred to, in a simile that compares Esau returning with game to an animal like a lion carrying a carcass in its mouth (Genesis). In any case, Isaac’s preference for Esau comes down to Esau’s prowess as a hunter.
28. game. Hebrew ṣayid, a term which refers to the flesh of animals caught in hunting. Leviticus 17:13 makes it clear that the term can refer to the meat of any edible beast or fowl. While venison may be used in that same way, and is not necessarily altogether incorrect as a translation, venison might introduce the misleading idea that the meat involved must be deer.
29. faint. Hebrew ʿayef, a term which speaks more to exhaustion than to hunger (cf. Gesenius-LT, DCH, HALOT).
30. feed me. Hebrew halʿiṭeni, a word which occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. In later Hebrew, the word is used of feeding animals (see BDB), and as a result some authors have suggested that the choice of this verb contributes to a picture of Esau as animal-like in his appetites (cf. Driver, Genesis__).
30. this red [stew]. Hebrew, ‘this red red [stuff]’. Driver suggests (citing three other writers) that perhaps the correct reading is to emend ʾadom-ʾadom, ‘red red’, to ʾedom-ʾedom, ‘savory, savory’ (Driver, Genesis). See Alter’s comments on the word choice (Alter, Genesis). In any case, whether ‘red’ or ‘savory’, the text is punning Esau’s name with the word. Compare verse 25, where ‘red’ appears. However, the WEB goes too far in declaring that “‘Edom’ means ‘red’.” It would be more accurate to say that Edom looks a bit like ‘red’, and that Genesis runs with that similarity.
31. First. The KJV reads ‘this day’, and indeed, the Hebrew expression is kayyom, composed of the preposition k-, the article (h)a, and yom, ‘day’. But this particular combination appears repeatedly as an idiom meaning ‘first’. See Driver’s Genesis (1916, 10th ed.), and DCH and HALOT for the examples.
34. ate and drank and rose and left. The verse contains a striking series of verbs, perhaps even a smidge more striking than can easily be translated: wayyokal wayyešt wayyaqam wayyelek wayyibez ʿesaw et ha-bᵉkorah.
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