8:20 Noah built an altar to the Lord. He then took some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 8
3:14 The Lord God said to the serpent, 9
“Because you have done this,
cursed 10 are you above all the wild beasts
and all the living creatures of the field!
On your belly you will crawl 11
and dust you will eat 12 all the days of your life.
8:1 But God remembered 15 Noah and all the wild animals and domestic animals that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to blow over 16 the earth and the waters receded.
47:18 When that year was over, they came to him the next year and said to him, “We cannot hide from our 17 lord that the money is used up and the livestock and the animals belong to our lord. Nothing remains before our lord except our bodies and our land.
1 tn Or “seven pairs” (cf. NRSV).
2 sn For a study of the Levitical terminology of “clean” and “unclean,” see L. E. Toombs, IDB 1:643.
3 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.
4 tn Heb “two two” meaning “in twos.”
7 tn Here for the first time the Hebrew word אָדָם (’adam) appears without the article, suggesting that it might now be the name “Adam” rather than “[the] man.” Translations of the Bible differ as to where they make the change from “man” to “Adam” (e.g., NASB and NIV translate “Adam” here, while NEB and NRSV continue to use “the man”; the KJV uses “Adam” twice in v. 19).
8 tn Heb “there was not found a companion who corresponded to him.” The subject of the third masculine singular verb form is indefinite. Without a formally expressed subject the verb may be translated as passive: “one did not find = there was not found.”
10 tn Heb “to keep alive.”
13 sn Offered burnt offerings on the altar. F. D. Maurice includes a chapter on the sacrifice of Noah in The Doctrine of Sacrifice. The whole burnt offering, according to Leviticus 1, represented the worshiper’s complete surrender and dedication to the
16 sn Note that God asks no question of the serpent, does not call for confession, as he did to the man and the woman; there is only the announcement of the curse. The order in this section is chiastic: The man is questioned, the woman is questioned, the serpent is cursed, sentence is passed on the woman, sentence is passed on the man.
17 tn The Hebrew word translated “cursed,” a passive participle from אָרָר (’arar), either means “punished” or “banished,” depending on how one interprets the following preposition. If the preposition is taken as comparative, then the idea is “cursed [i.e., punished] are you above [i.e., more than] all the wild beasts.” In this case the comparative preposition reflects the earlier comparison: The serpent was more shrewd than all others, and so more cursed than all others. If the preposition is taken as separative (see the note on the word “ground” in 4:11), then the idea is “cursed and banished from all the wild beasts.” In this case the serpent is condemned to isolation from all the other animals.
18 tn Heb “go”; “walk,” but in English “crawl” or “slither” better describes a serpent’s movement.
19 sn Dust you will eat. Being restricted to crawling on the ground would necessarily involve “eating dust,” although that is not the diet of the serpent. The idea of being brought low, of “eating dust” as it were, is a symbol of humiliation.
19 tn The verb “entered” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
20 tn Heb “every bird, every wing.”
22 tn The Hebrew word translated “remembered” often carries the sense of acting in accordance with what is remembered, i.e., fulfilling covenant promises (see B. S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel [SBT], especially p. 34).
23 tn Heb “to pass over.”
25 tn Heb “my.” The expression “my lord” occurs twice more in this verse.