“Blessed be Abram by 3 the Most High God,
Creator 4 of heaven and earth. 5
6:1 When humankind 10 began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born 11 to them, 12
8:1 But God remembered 13 Noah and all the wild animals and domestic animals that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to blow over 14 the earth and the waters receded.
1 tn Heb “turned his face.”
2 tn Heb “and he blessed all the assembly of Israel, and all the assembly of Israel was standing.”
3 tn The preposition לְ (lamed) introduces the agent after the passive participle.
4 tn Some translate “possessor of heaven and earth” (cf. NASB). But cognate evidence from Ugaritic indicates that there were two homonymic roots ָקנָה (qanah), one meaning “to create” (as in Gen 4:1) and the other “to obtain, to acquire, to possess.” While “possessor” would fit here, “creator” is the more likely due to the collocation with “heaven and earth.”
5 tn The terms translated “heaven” and “earth” are both objective genitives after the participle in construct.
6 tn Heb “made war.”
7 sn On the geographical background of vv. 1-2 see J. P. Harland, “Sodom and Gomorrah,” The Biblical Archaeologist Reader, 1:41-75; and D. N. Freedman, “The Real Story of the Ebla Tablets, Ebla and the Cities of the Plain,” BA 41 (1978): 143-64.
8 tn The Hebrew verb וַהֲקִמֹתִי (vahaqimoti) is the Hiphil perfect with a vav (ו) consecutive (picking up the future sense from the participles) from קוּם (qum, “to rise up”). This may refer to the confirmation or fulfillment of an earlier promise, but it is more likely that it anticipates the unconditional promise made to humankind following the flood (see Gen 9:9, 11, 17).
9 tn The perfect verb form with vav (ו) consecutive is best understood as specific future, continuing God’s description of what will happen (see vv. 17-18a).
10 tn The Hebrew text has the article prefixed to the noun. Here the article indicates the generic use of the word אָדָם (’adam): “humankind.”
11 tn This disjunctive clause (conjunction + subject + verb) is circumstantial to the initial temporal clause. It could be rendered, “with daughters being born to them.” For another example of such a disjunctive clause following the construction וַיְהִיכִּי (vayÿhiki, “and it came to pass when”), see 2 Sam 7:1.
12 tn The pronominal suffix is third masculine plural, indicating that the antecedent “humankind” is collective.
13 tn The Hebrew word translated “remembered” often carries the sense of acting in accordance with what is remembered, i.e., fulfilling covenant promises (see B. S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel [SBT], especially p. 34).
14 tn Heb “to pass over.”