7:1 The Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, for I consider you godly among this generation. 1 7:2 You must take with you seven 2 of every kind of clean animal, 3 the male and its mate, 4 two of every kind of unclean animal, the male and its mate, 7:3 and also seven 5 of every kind of bird in the sky, male and female, 6 to preserve their offspring 7 on the face of the earth. 7:4 For in seven days 8 I will cause it to rain 9 on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the ground every living thing that I have made.”
7:5 And Noah did all 10 that the Lord commanded him.
7:6 Noah 11 was 600 years old when the floodwaters engulfed 12 the earth. 7:7 Noah entered the ark along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives because 13 of the floodwaters. 7:8 Pairs 14 of clean animals, of unclean animals, of birds, and of everything that creeps along the ground, 7:9 male and female, came into the ark to Noah, 15 just as God had commanded him. 16 7:10 And after seven days the floodwaters engulfed the earth. 17
7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month – on that day all the fountains of the great deep 18 burst open and the floodgates of the heavens 19 were opened. 7:12 And the rain fell 20 on the earth forty days and forty nights.
7:13 On that very day Noah entered the ark, accompanied by his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, along with his wife and his sons’ three wives. 21 7:14 They entered, 22 along with every living creature after its kind, every animal after its kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, everything with wings. 23 7:15 Pairs 24 of all creatures 25 that have the breath of life came into the ark to Noah. 7:16 Those that entered were male and female, 26 just as God commanded him. Then the Lord shut him in.
7:17 The flood engulfed the earth for forty days. As the waters increased, they lifted the ark and raised it above the earth. 7:18 The waters completely overwhelmed 27 the earth, and the ark floated 28 on the surface of the waters. 7:19 The waters completely inundated 29 the earth so that even 30 all the high mountains under the entire sky were covered. 7:20 The waters rose more than twenty feet 31 above the mountains. 32 7:21 And all living things 33 that moved on the earth died, including the birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all humankind. 7:22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life 34 in its nostrils died. 7:23 So the Lord 35 destroyed 36 every living thing that was on the surface of the ground, including people, animals, creatures that creep along the ground, and birds of the sky. 37 They were wiped off the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark survived. 38 7:24 The waters prevailed over 39 the earth for 150 days.
16:7 The Lord’s angel 40 found Hagar near a spring of water in the desert – the spring that is along the road to Shur. 41 16:8 He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She replied, “I’m running away from 42 my mistress, Sarai.”
16:9 Then the Lord’s angel said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit 43 to her authority.
19:2 He said, “Here, my lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house. Stay the night 44 and wash your feet. Then you can be on your way early in the morning.” 45 “No,” they replied, “we’ll spend the night in the town square.” 46
20:1 Abraham journeyed from there to the Negev 47 region and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he lived as a temporary resident 48 in Gerar, 20:2 Abraham said about his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” So Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent for Sarah and took her.
12:1 Now the Lord said 49 to Abram, 50
“Go out 51 from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household
to the land that I will show you. 52
12:2 Then I will make you 53 into a great nation, and I will bless you, 54
and I will make your name great, 55
so that you will exemplify divine blessing. 56
12:3 I will bless those who bless you, 57
but the one who treats you lightly 58 I must curse,
and all the families of the earth will bless one another 59 by your name.”
12:4 So Abram left, 60 just as the Lord had told him to do, 61 and Lot went with him. (Now 62 Abram was 75 years old 63 when he departed from Haran.) 12:5 And Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew 64 Lot, and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired 65 in Haran, and they left for 66 the land of Canaan. They entered the land of Canaan.
12:6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree 67 of Moreh 68 at Shechem. 69 (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) 70
1 tn Heb “for you I see [as] godly before me in this generation.” The direct object (“you”) is placed first in the clause to give it prominence. The verb “to see” here signifies God’s evaluative discernment.
2 tn Or “seven pairs” (cf. NRSV).
3 sn For a study of the Levitical terminology of “clean” and “unclean,” see L. E. Toombs, IDB 1:643.
4 tn Heb “a male and his female” (also a second time at the end of this verse). The terms used here for male and female animals (אִישׁ, ’ish) and אִשָּׁה, ’ishah) normally refer to humans.
5 tn Or “seven pairs” (cf. NRSV).
6 tn Here (and in v. 9) the Hebrew text uses the normal generic terms for “male and female” (זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה, zakhar unÿqevah).
7 tn Heb “to keep alive offspring.”
8 tn Heb “for seven days yet,” meaning “after [or “in”] seven days.”
9 tn The Hiphil participle מַמְטִיר (mamtir, “cause to rain”) here expresses the certainty of the act in the imminent future.
10 tn Heb “according to all.”
11 tn Heb “Now Noah was.” The disjunctive clause (conjunction + subject + predicate nominative after implied “to be” verb) provides background information. The age of Noah receives prominence.
12 tn Heb “and the flood was water upon.” The disjunctive clause (conjunction + subject + verb) is circumstantial/temporal in relation to the preceding clause. The verb הָיָה (hayah) here carries the nuance “to come” (BDB 225 s.v. הָיָה). In this context the phrase “come upon” means “to engulf.”
13 tn The preposition מִן (min) is causal here, explaining why Noah and his family entered the ark.
14 tn Heb “two two” meaning “in twos.”
15 tn The Hebrew text of vv. 8-9a reads, “From the clean animal[s] and from the animal[s] which are not clean and from the bird[s] and everything that creeps on the ground, two two they came to Noah to the ark, male and female.”
16 tn Heb “Noah”; the pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.
17 tn Heb “came upon.”
18 tn The Hebrew term תְּהוֹם (tÿhom, “deep”) refers to the watery deep, the salty ocean – especially the primeval ocean that surrounds and underlies the earth (see Gen 1:2).
19 sn On the prescientific view of the sky reflected here, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World (AnBib), 46.
20 tn Heb “was.”
21 tn Heb “On that very day Noah entered, and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and the wife of Noah, and the three wives of his sons with him into the ark.”
22 tn The verb “entered” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
23 tn Heb “every bird, every wing.”
24 tn Heb “two two” meaning “in twos.”
25 tn Heb “flesh.”
26 tn Heb “Those that went in, male and female from all flesh they went in.”
27 tn Heb “and the waters were great and multiplied exceedingly.” The first verb in the sequence is וַיִּגְבְּרוּ (vayyigbÿru, from גָּבַר, gavar), meaning “to become great, mighty.” The waters did not merely rise; they “prevailed” over the earth, overwhelming it.
28 tn Heb “went.”
29 tn Heb “and the waters were great exceedingly, exceedingly.” The repetition emphasizes the depth of the waters.
30 tn Heb “and.”
31 tn Heb “rose fifteen cubits.” Since a cubit is considered by most authorities to be about eighteen inches, this would make the depth 22.5 feet. This figure might give the modern reader a false impression of exactness, however, so in the translation the phrase “fifteen cubits” has been rendered “more than twenty feet.”
32 tn Heb “the waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward and they covered the mountains.” Obviously, a flood of twenty feet did not cover the mountains; the statement must mean the flood rose about twenty feet above the highest mountain.
33 tn Heb “flesh.”
34 tn Heb “everything which [has] the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils from all which is in the dry land.”
35 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (the
36 tn Heb “wiped away” (cf. NRSV “blotted out”).
37 tn Heb “from man to animal to creeping thing and to the bird of the sky.”
38 tn The Hebrew verb שָׁאָר (sha’ar) means “to be left over; to survive” in the Niphal verb stem. It is the word used in later biblical texts for the remnant that escapes judgment. See G. F. Hasel, “Semantic Values of Derivatives of the Hebrew Root só’r,” AUSS 11 (1973): 152-69.
39 sn The Hebrew verb translated “prevailed over” suggests that the waters were stronger than the earth. The earth and everything in it were no match for the return of the chaotic deep.
40 tn Heb “the messenger of the
41 tn Heb “And the angel of the
42 tn Heb “from the presence of.”
43 tn The imperative וְהִתְעַנִּי (vÿhit’anni) is the Hitpael of עָנָה (’anah, here translated “submit”), the same word used for Sarai’s harsh treatment of her. Hagar is instructed not only to submit to Sarai’s authority, but to whatever mistreatment that involves. God calls for Hagar to humble herself.
44 tn The imperatives have the force of invitation.
45 tn These two verbs form a verbal hendiadys: “you can rise up early and go” means “you can go early.”
46 sn The town square refers to the wide street area at the gate complex of the city.
47 tn Or “the South [country]”; Heb “the land of the Negev.”
48 tn Heb “and he sojourned.”
49 sn The
50 tn The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh-lÿkha, “go out”) followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”). If Abram leaves, then God will do these three things. The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) is subordinated to the preceding cohortatives and indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram. On the syntactical structure of vv. 1-2 see R. B. Chisholm, “Evidence from Genesis,” A Case for Premillennialism, 37. For a similar sequence of volitive forms see Gen 45:18.
51 tn The initial command is the direct imperative (לֶךְ, lekh) from the verb הָלַךְ (halakh). It is followed by the lamed preposition with a pronominal suffix (לְךָ, lÿkha) emphasizing the subject of the imperative: “you leave.”
52 sn To the land that I will show you. The call of Abram illustrates the leading of the
53 tn The three first person verbs in v. 2a should be classified as cohortatives. The first two have pronominal suffixes, so the form itself does not indicate a cohortative. The third verb form is clearly cohortative.
54 sn I will bless you. The blessing of creation is now carried forward to the patriarch. In the garden God blessed Adam and Eve; in that blessing he gave them (1) a fruitful place, (2) endowed them with fertility to multiply, and (3) made them rulers over creation. That was all ruined at the fall. Now God begins to build his covenant people; in Gen 12-22 he promises to give Abram (1) a land flowing with milk and honey, (2) a great nation without number, and (3) kingship.
55 tn Or “I will make you famous.”
56 tn Heb “and be a blessing.” The verb form הְיֵה (hÿyeh) is the Qal imperative of the verb הָיָה (hayah). The vav (ו) with the imperative after the cohortatives indicates purpose or consequence. What does it mean for Abram to “be a blessing”? Will he be a channel or source of blessing for others, or a prime example of divine blessing? A similar statement occurs in Zech 8:13, where God assures his people, “You will be a blessing,” in contrast to the past when they “were a curse.” Certainly “curse” here does not refer to Israel being a source of a curse, but rather to the fact that they became a curse-word or byword among the nations, who regarded them as the epitome of an accursed people (see 2 Kgs 22:19; Jer 42:18; 44:8, 12, 22). Therefore the statement “be a blessing” seems to refer to Israel being transformed into a prime example of a blessed people, whose name will be used in blessing formulae, rather than in curses. If the statement “be a blessing” is understood in the same way in Gen 12:2, then it means that God would so bless Abram that other nations would hear of his fame and hold him up as a paradigm of divine blessing in their blessing formulae.
57 tn The Piel cohortative has as its object a Piel participle, masculine plural. Since the
58 tn In this part of God’s statement there are two significant changes that often go unnoticed. First, the parallel and contrasting participle מְקַלֶּלְךָ (mÿqallelkha) is now singular and not plural. All the versions and a few Masoretic
59 tn Theoretically the Niphal can be translated either as passive or reflexive/reciprocal. (The Niphal of “bless” is only used in formulations of the Abrahamic covenant. See Gen 12:2; 18:18; 28:14.) Traditionally the verb is taken as passive here, as if Abram were going to be a channel or source of blessing. But in later formulations of the Abrahamic covenant (see Gen 22:18; 26:4) the Hitpael replaces this Niphal form, suggesting a translation “will bless [i.e., “pronounce blessings on”] themselves [or “one another”].” The Hitpael of “bless” is used with a reflexive/reciprocal sense in Deut 29:18; Ps 72:17; Isa 65:16; Jer 4:2. Gen 12:2 predicts that Abram will be held up as a paradigm of divine blessing and that people will use his name in their blessing formulae. For examples of blessing formulae utilizing an individual as an example of blessing see Gen 48:20 and Ruth 4:11.
60 sn So Abram left. This is the report of Abram’s obedience to God’s command (see v. 1).
61 tn Heb “just as the
62 tn The disjunctive clause (note the pattern conjunction + subject + implied “to be” verb) is parenthetical, telling the age of Abram when he left Haran.
63 tn Heb “was the son of five years and seventy year[s].”
64 tn Heb “the son of his brother.”
65 tn For the semantic nuance “acquire [property]” for the verb עָשָׂה (’asah), see BDB 795 s.v. עָשָׂה.
66 tn Heb “went out to go.”
67 tn Or “terebinth.”
68 sn The Hebrew word Moreh (מוֹרֶה, moreh) means “teacher.” It may well be that the place of this great oak tree was a Canaanite shrine where instruction took place.
69 tn Heb “as far as the place of Shechem, as far as the oak of Moreh.”
70 tn The disjunctive clause gives important information parenthetical in nature – the promised land was occupied by Canaanites.