Genesis 18:21

18:21 that I must go down ¹  and see if they are as wicked as the outcry suggests. ²  If not, ³  I want to know.”

Genesis 22:5

22:5 So he ⁴  said to his servants, “You two stay ⁵  here with the donkey while ⁶  the boy and I go up there. We will worship ⁷  and then return to you.” ⁸ 

Genesis 24:11

24:11 He made the camels kneel down by the well ⁹  outside the city. It was evening, ¹⁰  the time when the women would go out to draw water.

Genesis 43:2

43:2 When they finished eating the grain they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, “Return, buy us a little more food.”

Genesis 44:34

44:34 For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I couldn’t bear to see ¹¹  my father’s pain.” ¹² 

¹ tn The cohortative indicates the Lord’s resolve.

² tn Heb “[if] according to the outcry that has come to me they have done completely.” Even the Lord, who is well aware of the human capacity to sin, finds it hard to believe that anyone could be as bad as the “outcry” against Sodom and Gomorrah suggests.

³ sn The short phrase if not provides a ray of hope and inspires Abraham’s intercession.

⁴ tn Heb “And Abraham.” The proper name has been replaced in the translation by the pronoun (“he”) for stylistic reasons.

⁵ tn The Hebrew verb is masculine plural, referring to the two young servants who accompanied Abraham and Isaac on the journey.

⁶ tn The disjunctive clause (with the compound subject preceding the verb) may be circumstantial and temporal.

⁷ tn This Hebrew word literally means “to bow oneself close to the ground.” It often means “to worship.”

⁸ sn It is impossible to know what Abraham was thinking when he said, “we will…return to you.” When he went he knew (1) that he was to sacrifice Isaac, and (2) that God intended to fulfill his earlier promises through Isaac. How he reconciled those facts is not clear in the text. Heb 11:17-19 suggests that Abraham believed God could restore Isaac to him through resurrection.

⁷ tn Heb “well of water.”

⁸ tn Heb “at the time of evening.”

¹⁰ tn The Hebrew text has “lest I see,” which expresses a negative purpose – “I cannot go up lest I see.”

¹¹ tn Heb “the calamity which would find my father.”