16 August 2022 draft-bible
3. Sojourn. The Hebrew term here includes the idea that Isaac is a foreigner, and then the rest of the verse contrasts Isaac’s status as a guest with the idea that Isaac’s descendants will one day possess an area of land which will include Philistia. This is a different verb from the ‘dwell’ of verse 2. The WEB flattens the distinction between the two verbs, and instead simply repeats “Live … Live”.
4. bless themselves. As in 22:18.
7. asked about. As in the Hebrew, there is no ‘him’ here.
8. Abimelech … looked out at a window and saw. As the English text of the ASV and WEB stands, I can imagine construing the statement either of two ways. On one interpretation, Abimelech is standing at a window, he looks out, and spies the happy couple. On the other interpretation, Abimelech looks at a window, that is, he sees a window a ways off, and behind the window are Isaac and Sarah. In other words, is the ‘window’ referred to in the verse close to Abimelech, who is standing indoors looking out, or is the window close to Isaac and Rebekah, as Abimelech sees them in a building? But the combination of the verb hišqif and the preposition bᵉʿad make the situation clear in the Hebrew text: Abimelech is in a building, looking down from above through a window.
8. sporting. It is hard to say exactly what was going on with Isaac and his wife, although the verb involved tends to be associated with laughter and amusement, and can carry sexual overtones. Whatever behavior was involved, it was immediately clear to Abimelech that Isaac and Rebekah were certainly not brother and sister. The English word sporting seems to preserve the right connotations and ambiguities to serve well here. The verbal root involved, ṣḥq, is the same one from which the name Isaac (Hebrew Yiṣḥaq) is formed, and reappears periodically in stories about him.
14 collection of slaves. The Hebrew word here is ʿbdh, which appears only here and in Job 1:3. In both cases, a man is described as being wealthy, owning many animals, and having a ‘great ʿbdh. Given this scarcity of uses, it would seem that context alone will not yield a definite meaning, and so we must turn to etymology to provide hypotheses. The most obvious guess would be to relate ʿbdh to the better-known word ʿbd, ‘slave’, and that therefore ʿbdh is a collective noun for a person’s slaves. This must be the line of reasoning followed by HALOT. DCH grants that this interpretation might be correct, but also gives the alternate reading ‘cattle’. And then there is the interpretation of the ASV and WEB, which here treat the term as meaning ‘household’.
15 slaves. Hebrew ʿabadim.
19. slaves. Hebrew ʿabadim.
19. living water. That is, naturally flowing water.
20. Esek … contended. The verse depends on a pun between the name Esek and the Hebrew term for ‘contention’.
21. Sitnah. The name shares a root with Hebrew words related to hostility or opposition.
22. Rehoboth. Hebrew for, roughly, ‘wide open spaces’.
25. slaves. Hebrew ʿabadim.
26. friend. Hebrew mereʿa, a term which Driver suggests means “confidential advisor” (Genesis, 1916 [1904], 10th ed.).
31. early. The ASV’s expression here, ‘betimes’, must mean ‘early’ in this context, given the Hebrew underlying the English here. It is true that in English ‘betimes’ also has the sense of ‘sometimes’, but to read it as ‘some time’, as the WEB does, is simply an English-based misunderstanding that would not be made if the Hebrew were consulted.
32. slaves. Hebrew ʿabadim.
33. Shibah. Hebrew šibʿah, which is the masculine form of the word ‘seven’. The author may also be inviting a comparison to the word šᵉbuʿah, ‘oath’, but the WEB’s notes are going a bit far to say that “Shibah means ‘oath’ or ‘seven’.” In any case, this story claims that the name ‘Beersheba’ is derived from Isaac naming the when Shibah. Compare this to Genesis 21:31, another version of Beersheba’s origin story, in which Beersheba receives its name from a similar meeting between Abraham and Abimelech.
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