15:7 The Lord said 1 to him, “I am the Lord 2 who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans 3 to give you this land to possess.”
“Our sister, may you become the mother 6 of thousands of ten thousands!
May your descendants possess the strongholds 7 of their enemies.”
1 tn Heb “And he said.”
2 sn I am the
3 sn The phrase of the Chaldeans is a later editorial clarification for the readers, designating the location of Ur. From all evidence there would have been no Chaldeans in existence at this early date; they are known in the time of the neo-Babylonian empire in the first millennium
4 tn Heb “drive out.” The language may seem severe, but Sarah’s maternal instincts sensed a real danger in that Ishmael was not treating Isaac with the proper respect.
7 tn Heb “and said to her.”
8 tn Heb “become thousands of ten thousands.”
9 tn Heb “gate,” which here stands for a walled city. In an ancient Near Eastern city the gate complex was the main area of defense (hence the translation “stronghold”). A similar phrase occurs in Gen 22:17.
10 tn Heb “and may he give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you.” The name “Abraham” is an objective genitive here; this refers to the blessing that God gave to Abraham.
11 tn The words “the land” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.
12 tn Heb “the land of your sojournings,” that is, the land where Jacob had been living as a resident alien, as his future descendants would after him.
13 tn The verb כּוּל (kul) in the Pilpel stem means “to nourish, to support, to sustain.” As in 1 Kgs 20:27, it here means “to supply with food.”