15 October 2022 draft-bible
8. How old are you? ASV translates the Hebrew literally here: “How many are the days of the years of thy life?”
9. The years. Hebrew “the days of the years”.
9. my sojournings. Hebrew mᵉguray. ASV and WEB read “pilgrimage”. By choosing this word to describe himself, Jacob is describing himself as a lifelong foreigner: he is born away from his ancestral home, and flees from place to place ever after.
9. few. Jacob is comparing himself, at the very least, to Isaac and Abraham, who lived 180 and 175 years, respectively, and perhaps to other forefathers who according to Genesis lived even longer. If at 130 he is remarking that he has not achieved the long life of his father and grandfather, then this would seem to assume that Jacob is aware that he is near the end of his life.
11. land of Rameses. This mention would seem to indicate that the “land of Rameses” must be either exactly or approximately the same as the “land of Goshen” (compare vs. 6). According to Speiser, the phrase is “an anachronism, since the royal name became popular only under the Nineteenth dynasty (not before the end of the thirteenth century)” (Genesis, 1964, p. 351).
12. according to the number of their dependents. Hebrew lᵉfi haṭṭaf, “according to the little ones”. WEB reads, according to biblehub.com as of October 2022, “according to their families”. On the other hand, the WEB at ebible.org, which is presumably more up to date, reads “according to the sizes of their families”. Here I have borrowed the wording of the NHEB.
15, 16. is used up. Hebrew ʾPS, to become nothing or come to nothing. The ASV uses the verb “fail” in both cases, while the WEB keep “fails” in verse 15 and “is gone” in verse 16.
19. slaves. Both in this verse and 21, Speiser prefers to read “serfs” (Genesis, 1964).
21. he moved them to the cities. Hebrew HʿBYR ʾTW LʿRYM. If we follow the Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint, however, we would read HʿBYD ʾTW LʿBDYM, that is, “he reduced them to slaves” (see BHS 1997). This descrepancy could easily occur as a result of a scribal mistake: exchanges of B and D are particularly common.
Copyright This page is released under the CC0 1.0 license.