Genesis 37:2

37:2 This is the account of Jacob.

Joseph, his seventeen-year-old son, ¹  was taking care of ²  the flocks with his brothers. Now he was a youngster ³  working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. ⁴  Joseph brought back a bad report about them ⁵  to their father.

Numbers 4:3

4:3 from thirty years old and upward to fifty years old, all who enter the company ⁶  to do the work in the tent of meeting.

Numbers 4:2

4:2 “Take a census ⁷  of the Kohathites from among the Levites, by their families and by their clans,

Numbers 5:4

5:4 So the Israelites did so, and expelled them outside the camp. As the Lord had spoken ⁸  to Moses, so the Israelites did.

Luke 3:23

The Genealogy of Jesus

3:23 So ⁹  Jesus, when he began his ministry, ¹⁰  was about thirty years old. He was ¹¹  the son (as was supposed) ¹²  of Joseph, the son ¹³  of Heli,

¹ tn Heb “a son of seventeen years.” The word “son” is in apposition to the name “Joseph.”

² tn Or “tending”; Heb “shepherding” or “feeding.”

³ tn Or perhaps “a helper.” The significance of this statement is unclear. It may mean “now the lad was with,” or it may suggest Joseph was like a servant to them.

⁴ tn Heb “and he [was] a young man with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zilpah, the wives of his father.”

⁵ tn Heb “their bad report.” The pronoun is an objective genitive, specifying that the bad or damaging report was about the brothers.

⁶ tn The word “company” is literally “host, army” (צָבָא, tsava’). The repetition of similar expressions makes the translation difficult: Heb “all [who] come to the host to do work in the tent.”

⁷ tn Heb “lift up the head.” The form נָשֹׂא (naso’) is the Qal infinitive absolute functioning here as a pure verb form. This serves to emphasize the basic verbal root idea (see GKC 346 §113.bb).

⁸ tn The perfect tense is here given a past perfect nuance to stress that the word of the Lord preceded the obedience.

⁹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the summary nature of the statement.

¹⁰ tn The words “his ministry” are not in the Greek text, but are implied. Direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context, but must be supplied for the contemporary English reader.

¹¹ tn Grk “of age, being.” Due to the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the participle ὤν (wn) has been translated as a finite verb with the pronoun “he” supplied as subject, and a new sentence begun in the translation at this point.

¹² sn The parenthetical remark as was supposed makes it clear that Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. But a question still remains whose genealogy this is. Mary is nowhere mentioned, so this may simply refer to the line of Joseph, who would have functioned as Jesus’ legal father, much like stepchildren can have when they are adopted by a second parent.

¹³ tc Several of the names in the list have alternate spellings in the ms tradition, but most of these are limited to a few mss. Only significant differences are considered in the notes through v. 38.