47:18 When that year was over, they came to him the next year and said to him, “We cannot hide from our 9 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 Heb “and he”; the referent (the
2 tn Heb “wiped away” (cf. NRSV “blotted out”).
3 tn Heb “from man to animal to creeping thing and to the bird of the sky.”
4 tn The Hebrew verb שָׁאָר (sha’ar) means “to be left over; to survive” in the Niphal verb stem. It is the word used in later biblical texts for the remnant that escapes judgment. See G. F. Hasel, “Semantic Values of Derivatives of the Hebrew Root só’r,” AUSS 11 (1973): 152-69.
5 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
6 sn The expression he alone is left meant that (so far as Jacob knew) Benjamin was the only surviving child of his mother Rachel.
7 sn The expression bring down my gray hair is figurative, using a part for the whole – they would put Jacob in the grave. But the gray head signifies a long life of worry and trouble.
8 tn Heb “to Sheol,” the dwelling place of the dead.
9 tn Heb “my.” The expression “my lord” occurs twice more in this verse.