Genesis 28:1-22

28:1 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman! ¹  28:2 Leave immediately ²  for Paddan Aram! Go to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and find yourself a wife there, among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. 28:3 May the sovereign God ³  bless you! May he make you fruitful and give you a multitude of descendants! ⁴  Then you will become ⁵  a large nation. ⁶  28:4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing he gave to Abraham ⁷  so that you may possess the land ⁸  God gave to Abraham, the land where you have been living as a temporary resident.” ⁹  28:5 So Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean and brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.

28:6 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him off to Paddan Aram to find a wife there. ¹⁰  As he blessed him, ¹¹  Isaac commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.” ¹²  28:7 Jacob obeyed his father and mother and left for Paddan Aram. 28:8 Then Esau realized ¹³  that the Canaanite women ¹⁴  were displeasing to ¹⁵  his father Isaac. 28:9 So Esau went to Ishmael and married ¹⁶  Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, along with the wives he already had.

Jacob’s Dream at Bethel

28:10 Meanwhile Jacob left Beer Sheba and set out for Haran. 28:11 He reached a certain place ¹⁷  where he decided to camp because the sun had gone down. ¹⁸  He took one of the stones ¹⁹  and placed it near his head. ²⁰  Then he fell asleep ²¹  in that place 28:12 and had a dream. ²²  He saw ²³  a stairway ²⁴  erected on the earth with its top reaching to the heavens. The angels of God were going up and coming down it 28:13 and the Lord stood at its top. He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac. ²⁵  I will give you and your descendants the ground ²⁶  you are lying on. 28:14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, ²⁷  and you will spread out ²⁸  to the west, east, north, and south. All the families of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another ²⁹  using your name and that of your descendants. ³⁰  28:15 I am with you! ³¹  I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you!”

28:16 Then Jacob woke up ³²  and thought, ³³  “Surely the Lord is in this place, but I did not realize it!” 28:17 He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! This is nothing else than the house of God! This is the gate of heaven!”

28:18 Early ³⁴  in the morning Jacob ³⁵  took the stone he had placed near his head ³⁶  and set it up as a sacred stone. ³⁷  Then he poured oil on top of it. 28:19 He called that place Bethel, ³⁸  although the former name of the town was Luz. 28:20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God is with me and protects me on this journey I am taking and gives me food ³⁹  to eat and clothing to wear, 28:21 and I return safely to my father’s home, ⁴⁰  then the Lord will become my God. 28:22 Then this stone ⁴¹  that I have set up as a sacred stone will be the house of God, and I will surely ⁴²  give you back a tenth of everything you give me.” ⁴³ 

Genesis 6:10

6:10 Noah had ⁴⁴  three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Numbers 14:28-34

14:28 Say to them, ‘As I live, ⁴⁵  says ⁴⁶  the Lord, I will surely do to you just what you have spoken in my hearing. ⁴⁷  14:29 Your dead bodies ⁴⁸  will fall in this wilderness – all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me. 14:30 You will by no means enter into the land where ⁴⁹  I swore ⁵⁰  to settle ⁵¹  you. The only exceptions are Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 14:31 But I will bring in your little ones, whom you said would become victims of war, ⁵²  and they will enjoy ⁵³  the land that you have despised. 14:32 But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, 14:33 and your children will wander ⁵⁴  in the wilderness forty years and suffer for your unfaithfulness, ⁵⁵  until your dead bodies lie finished ⁵⁶  in the wilderness. 14:34 According to the number of the days you have investigated this land, forty days – one day for a year – you will suffer for ⁵⁷  your iniquities, forty years, and you will know what it means to thwart me. ⁵⁸ 

Isaiah 14:24

14:24 ⁵⁹ The Lord who commands armies makes this solemn vow:

“Be sure of this:

Just as I have intended, so it will be;

just as I have planned, it will happen.

Isaiah 55:11

55:11 In the same way, the promise that I make

does not return to me, having accomplished nothing. ⁶⁰ 

No, it is realized as I desire

and is fulfilled as I intend.” ⁶¹ 

Lamentations 2:17

ע (Ayin)

2:17 The Lord has done what he planned;

he has fulfilled ⁶²  his promise ⁶³ 

that he threatened ⁶⁴  long ago: ⁶⁵ 

He has overthrown you without mercy ⁶⁶ 

and has enabled the enemy to gloat over you;

he has exalted your adversaries’ power. ⁶⁷ 

Daniel 9:12

9:12 He has carried out his threats ⁶⁸  against us and our rulers ⁶⁹  who were over ⁷⁰  us by bringing great calamity on us – what has happened to Jerusalem has never been equaled under all heaven!

Zechariah 1:6

1:6 But have my words and statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, not outlived your fathers? ⁷¹  Then they paid attention ⁷²  and confessed, ‘The Lord who rules over all has indeed done what he said he would do to us, because of our sinful ways.’”

Matthew 24:35

24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. ⁷³ 

Luke 21:13

21:13 This will be a time for you to serve as witnesses. ⁷⁴ 

Luke 21:33

21:33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. ⁷⁵ 

[28:1]  ¹ tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”

[28:2]  ² tn Heb “Arise! Go!” The first of the two imperatives is adverbial and stresses the immediacy of the departure.

[28:3]  ³ tn Heb “El Shaddai.” See the extended note on the phrase “sovereign God” in Gen 17:1.

[28:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “and make you fruitful and multiply you.” See Gen 17:6, 20 for similar terminology.

[28:3]  ⁵ tn The perfect verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here indicates consequence. The collocation הָיָה + preposition לְ (hayah + lÿ) means “become.”

[28:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “an assembly of peoples.”

[28:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “and may he give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you.” The name “Abraham” is an objective genitive here; this refers to the blessing that God gave to Abraham.

[28:4]  ⁸ tn The words “the land” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[28:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “the land of your sojournings,” that is, the land where Jacob had been living as a resident alien, as his future descendants would after him.

[28:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to take for himself from there a wife.”

[28:6]  ¹¹ tn The infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffix form a temporal clause.

[28:6]  ¹² tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”

[28:8]  ¹³ tn Heb “saw.”

[28:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the daughters of Canaan.”

[28:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “evil in the eyes of.”

[28:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “took for a wife.”

[28:11]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “the place.” The article may indicate simply that the place is definite in the mind of the narrator. However, as the story unfolds the place is transformed into a holy place. See A. P. Ross, “Jacob’s Vision: The Founding of Bethel,” BSac 142 (1985): 224-37.

[28:11]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and he spent the night there because the sun had gone down.”

[28:11]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “he took from the stones of the place,” which here means Jacob took one of the stones (see v. 18).

[28:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and he put [it at] the place of his head.” The text does not actually say the stone was placed under his head to serve as a pillow, although most interpreters and translators assume this. It is possible the stone served some other purpose. Jacob does not seem to have been a committed monotheist yet (see v. 20-21) so he may have believed it contained some spiritual power. Note that later in the story he anticipates the stone becoming the residence of God (see v. 22). Many cultures throughout the world view certain types of stones as magical and/or sacred. See J. G. Fraser, Folklore in the Old Testament, 231-37.

[28:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “lay down.”

[28:12]  ²² tn Heb “and dreamed.”

[28:12]  ²³ tn Heb “and look.” The scene which Jacob witnessed is described in three clauses introduced with הִנֵּה (hinneh). In this way the narrator invites the reader to witness the scene through Jacob’s eyes. J. P. Fokkelman points out that the particle goes with a lifted arm and an open mouth: “There, a ladder! Oh, angels! and look, the Lord himself” (Narrative Art in Genesis [SSN], 51-52).

[28:12]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew noun סֻלָּם (sullam, “ladder, stairway”) occurs only here in the OT, but there appears to be an Akkadian cognate simmiltu (with metathesis of the second and third consonants and a feminine ending) which has a specialized meaning of “stairway, ramp.” See H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena (SBLDS), 34. For further discussion see C. Houtman, “What Did Jacob See in His Dream at Bethel? Some Remarks on Genesis 28:10-22,” VT 27 (1977): 337-52; J. G. Griffiths, “The Celestial Ladder and the Gate of Heaven,” ExpTim 76 (1964/65): 229-30; and A. R. Millard, “The Celestial Ladder and the Gate of Heaven,” ExpTim 78 (1966/67): 86-87.

[28:13]  ²⁵ tn Heb “the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.” The Hebrew word for “father” can typically be used in a broader sense than the English word, in this case referring to Abraham (who was Jacob’s grandfather). For stylistic reasons and for clarity, the words “your father” are supplied with “Isaac” in the translation.

[28:13]  ²⁶ tn The Hebrew term אֶרֶץ (’erets) can mean “[the] earth,” “land,” “region,” “piece of ground,” or “ground” depending on the context. Here the term specifically refers to the plot of ground on which Jacob was lying, but at the same time this stands by metonymy for the entire land of Canaan.

[28:14]  ²⁷ tn This is the same Hebrew word translated “ground” in the preceding verse.

[28:14]  ²⁸ tn The verb is singular in the Hebrew; Jacob is addressed as the representative of his descendants.

[28:14]  ²⁹ tn Theoretically the Niphal stem can be translated either as passive or reflexive/reciprocal. (The Niphal of “bless” is only used in formulations of the Abrahamic covenant. See Gen 12:2; 18:18; 28:14.) Traditionally the verb is taken as passive here, as if Jacob were going to be a channel or source of blessing. But in other formulations of the Abrahamic covenant (see Gen 22:18; 26:4) the Hitpael replaces this Niphal form, suggesting a translation “will bless (i.e., pronounce blessings upon) themselves/one another.” The Hitpael of “bless” is used with a reflexive/reciprocal sense in Deut 29:18; Ps 72:17; Isa 65:16; Jer 4:2. Gen 28:14 predicts that Jacob will be held up as a paradigm of divine blessing and that people will use his name in their blessing formulae (see Gen 12:2 and 18:18 as well, where Abram/Abraham receives this promise). For examples of blessing formulae utilizing an individual as an example of blessing see Gen 48:20 and Ruth 4:11.

[28:14]  ³⁰ tn Heb “and they will pronounce blessings by you, all the families of the earth, and by your offspring.”

[28:15]  ³¹ tn Heb “Look, I [am] with you.” The clause is a nominal clause; the verb to be supplied could be present (as in the translation) or future, “Look, I [will be] with you” (cf. NEB).

[28:16]  ³² tn Heb “woke up from his sleep.” This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[28:16]  ³³ tn Heb “said.”

[28:18]  ³⁴ tn Heb “and he got up early…and he took.”

[28:18]  ³⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[28:18]  ³⁶ tn See the note on this phrase in v. 11.

[28:18]  ³⁷ tn Heb “standing stone.”

[28:19]  ³⁸ tn The name Bethel means “house of God” in Hebrew (see v. 17).

[28:20]  ³⁹ tn Heb “bread,” although the term can be used for food in general.

[28:21]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “and I return in peace to the house of my father.”

[28:22]  ⁴¹ tn The disjunctive clause structure (conjunction + noun/subject) is used to highlight the statement.

[28:22]  ⁴² tn The infinitive absolute is used before the finite verb for emphasis.

[28:22]  ⁴³ tn Heb “and all which you give to me I will surely give a tenth of it to you.” The disjunctive clause structure (conjunction + noun/object) highlights this statement as well.

[6:10]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “fathered.”

[14:28]  ⁴⁵ sn Here again is the oath that God swore in his wrath, an oath he swore by himself, that they would not enter the land. “As the Lord lives,” or “by the life of the Lord,” are ways to render it.

[14:28]  ⁴⁶ tn The word נְאֻם (nÿ’um) is an “oracle.” It is followed by the subjective genitive: “the oracle of the Lord” is equal to saying “the Lord says.”

[14:28]  ⁴⁷ tn Heb “in my ears.”

[14:29]  ⁴⁸ tn Or “your corpses” (also in vv. 32, 33).

[14:30]  ⁴⁹ tn The relative pronoun “which” is joined with the resumptive pronoun “in it” to form a smoother reading “where.”

[14:30]  ⁵⁰ tn The Hebrew text uses the anthropomorphic expression “I raised my hand” in taking an oath.

[14:30]  ⁵¹ tn Heb “to cause you to dwell; to cause you to settle.”

[14:31]  ⁵² tn Or “plunder.”

[14:31]  ⁵³ tn Heb “know.”

[14:33]  ⁵⁴ tn The word is “shepherds.” It means that the people would be wilderness nomads, grazing their flock on available land.

[14:33]  ⁵⁵ tn Heb “you shall bear your whoredoms.” The imagery of prostitution is used throughout the Bible to reflect spiritual unfaithfulness, leaving the covenant relationship and following after false gods. Here it is used generally for their rebellion in the wilderness, but not for following other gods.

[14:33]  ⁵⁶ tn The infinitive is from תָּמַם (tamam), which means “to be complete.” The word is often used to express completeness in a good sense – whole, blameless, or the like. Here and in v. 35 it seems to mean “until your deaths have been completed.” See also Gen 47:15; Deut 2:15.

[14:34]  ⁵⁷ tn Heb “you shall bear.”

[14:34]  ⁵⁸ tn The phrase refers to the consequences of open hostility to God, or perhaps abandonment of God. The noun תְּנוּאָה (tÿnu’ah) occurs in Job 33:10 (perhaps). The related verb occurs in Num 30:6 HT (30:5 ET) and 32:7 with the sense of “disallow, discourage.” The sense of the expression adopted in this translation comes from the meticulous study of R. Loewe, “Divine Frustration Exegetically Frustrated,” Words and Meanings, 137-58.

[14:24]  ⁵⁹ sn Having announced the downfall of the Chaldean empire, the Lord appends to this prophecy a solemn reminder that the Assyrians, the major Mesopotamian power of Isaiah’s day, would be annihilated, foreshadowing what would subsequently happen to Babylon and the other hostile nations.

[55:11]  ⁶⁰ tn Heb “so is the word which goes out from my mouth, it does not return to empty.” “Word” refers here to divine promises, like the ones made just prior to and after this (see vv. 7b, 12-13).

[55:11]  ⁶¹ tn Heb “but it accomplishes what I desire, and succeeds [on the mission] which I send it.”

[2:17]  ⁶² tn The verb בָּצַע (batsa’) has a broad range of meanings: (1) “to cut off, break off,” (2) “to injure” a person, (3) “to gain by violence,” (4) “to finish, complete” and (5) “to accomplish, fulfill” a promise.

[2:17]  ⁶³ tn Heb “His word.” When used in collocation with the verb בָּצַע (batsa’, “to fulfill,” see previous tn), the accusative noun אִמְרָה (’imrah) means “promise.”

[2:17]  ⁶⁴ tn Heb “commanded” or “decreed.” If a reference to prophetic oracles is understood, then “decreed” is preferable. If understood as a reference to the warnings in the covenant, then “threatened” is a preferable rendering.

[2:17]  ⁶⁵ tn Heb “from days of old.”

[2:17]  ⁶⁶ tn Heb “He has overthrown and has not shown mercy.” The two verbs חָרַס וְלֹא חָמָל (kharas vÿlo’ khamal) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its verbal sense and the second functions adverbially: “He has overthrown you without mercy.” וְלֹא חָמָל (vÿlo’ khamal) alludes to 2:2.

[2:17]  ⁶⁷ tn Heb “He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.” The term “horn” (קֶרֶן, qeren) normally refers to the horn of a bull, one of the most powerful animals in ancient Israel. This term is often used figuratively as a symbol of strength, usually in reference to the military might of an army (Deut 33:17; 1 Sam 2:1, 10; 2 Sam 22:3; Pss 18:3; 75:11; 89:18, 25; 92:11; 112:9; 1 Chr 25:5; Jer 48:25; Lam 2:3; Ezek 29:21), just as warriors are sometimes figuratively described as “bulls.” To lift up the horn often means to boast and to lift up someone else’s horn is to give victory or cause to boast.

[9:12]  ⁶⁸ tn Heb “he has fulfilled his word(s) which he spoke.”

[9:12]  ⁶⁹ tn Heb “our judges.”

[9:12]  ⁷⁰ tn Heb “who judged.”

[1:6]  ⁷¹ tc BHS suggests אֶתְכֶם (’etkhem, “you”) for the MT אֲבֹתֵיכֶם (’avotekhem, “your fathers”) to harmonize with v. 4. In v. 4 the ancestors would not turn but in v. 6 they appear to have done so. The subject in v. 6, however, is to be construed as Zechariah’s own listeners.

[1:6]  ⁷² tn Heb “they turned” (so ASV). Many English versions have “they repented” here; cf. CEV “they turned back to me.”

[24:35]  ⁷³ sn The words that Jesus predicts here will never pass away. They are more stable and lasting than creation itself. For this kind of image, see Isa 40:8; 55:10-11.

[21:13]  ⁷⁴ tn Grk “This will turn out to you for [a] testimony.”

[21:33]  ⁷⁵ sn The words that Jesus predicts here will never pass away. They are more stable and lasting than creation itself. For this kind of image, see Isa 40:8; 55:10-11.