Genesis 45:7

45:7 God sent me ¹  ahead of you to preserve you ²  on the earth and to save your lives ³  by a great deliverance.

Genesis 15:12

15:12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep, ⁴  and great terror overwhelmed him. ⁵ 

Genesis 19:13

19:13 because we are about to destroy ⁶  it. The outcry against this place ⁷  is so great before the Lord that he ⁸  has sent us to destroy it.”

Genesis 27:34

27:34 When Esau heard ⁹  his father’s words, he wailed loudly and bitterly. ¹⁰  He said to his father, “Bless me too, my father!”

Genesis 20:9

20:9 Abimelech summoned Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? What sin did I commit against you that would cause you to bring such great guilt on me and my kingdom? ¹¹  You have done things to me that should not be done!” ¹² 

Genesis 27:33

27:33 Isaac began to shake violently ¹³  and asked, “Then who else hunted game and brought it to me? I ate all of it just before you arrived, and I blessed him. ¹⁴  He will indeed be blessed!”

Genesis 29:2

29:2 He saw ¹⁵  in the field a well with ¹⁶  three flocks of sheep lying beside it, because the flocks were watered from that well. Now ¹⁷  a large stone covered the mouth of the well.

¹ sn God sent me. The repetition of this theme that God sent Joseph is reminiscent of commission narratives in which the leader could announce that God sent him (e.g., Exod 3:15).

² tn Heb “to make you a remnant.” The verb, followed here by the preposition לְ (lÿ), means “to make.”

³ tn The infinitive gives a second purpose for God’s action.

⁴ tn Heb “a deep sleep fell on Abram.”

⁵ tn Heb “and look, terror, a great darkness was falling on him.”

⁷ tn The Hebrew participle expresses an imminent action here.

⁸ tn Heb “for their outcry.” The words “about this place” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁹ tn Heb “the Lord.” The repetition of the divine name has been replaced in the translation by the pronoun “he” for stylistic reasons.

¹⁰ tn The temporal clause is introduced with the temporal indicator and has the infinitive as its verb.

¹¹ tn Heb “and he yelled [with] a great and bitter yell to excess.”

¹³ tn Heb “How did I sin against you that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin?” The expression “great sin” refers to adultery. For discussion of the cultural background of the passage, see J. J. Rabinowitz, “The Great Sin in Ancient Egyptian Marriage Contracts,” JNES 18 (1959): 73, and W. L. Moran, “The Scandal of the ‘Great Sin’ at Ugarit,” JNES 18 (1959): 280-81.

¹⁴ tn Heb “Deeds which should not be done you have done to me.” The imperfect has an obligatory nuance here.

¹⁶ tn Heb “and Isaac trembled with a great trembling to excess.” The verb “trembled” is joined with a cognate accusative, which is modified by an adjective “great,” and a prepositional phrase “to excess.” All of this is emphatic, showing the violence of Isaac’s reaction to the news.

¹⁷ tn Heb “Who then is he who hunted game and brought [it] to me so that I ate from all before you arrived and blessed him?”

¹⁹ tn Heb “and he saw, and look.” As in Gen 28:12-15, the narrator uses the particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “look”) here and in the next clause to draw the reader into the story.

²⁰ tn Heb “and look, there.”

²¹ tn The disjunctive clause (introduced by the noun with the prefixed conjunction) provides supplemental information that is important to the story.