Acts 7:6

7:6 But God spoke as follows: ‘Your ¹  descendants will be foreigners ²  in a foreign country, whose citizens will enslave them and mistreat them for four hundred years. ³ 

Genesis 15:13-16

15:13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain ⁴  that your descendants will be strangers ⁵  in a foreign country. ⁶  They will be enslaved and oppressed ⁷  for four hundred years. 15:14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. ⁸  Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15:15 But as for you, ⁹  you will go to your ancestors ¹⁰  in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹¹  15:16 In the fourth generation ¹²  your descendants ¹³  will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.” ¹⁴ 

Genesis 15:2

15:2 But Abram said, “O sovereign Lord, ¹⁵  what will you give me since ¹⁶  I continue to be ¹⁷  childless, and my heir ¹⁸  is ¹⁹  Eliezer of Damascus?” ²⁰ 

Genesis 3:8-9

The Judgment Oracles of God at the Fall

3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about ²¹  in the orchard at the breezy time ²²  of the day, and they hid ²³  from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard. 3:9 But the Lord God called to ²⁴  the man and said to him, “Where are you?” ²⁵ 

[7:6]  ¹ tn Grk “that his”; the discourse switches from indirect to direct with the following verbs. For consistency the entire quotation is treated as second person direct discourse in the translation.

[7:6]  ² tn Or “will be strangers,” that is, one who lives as a noncitizen of a foreign country.

[7:6]  ³ sn A quotation from Gen 15:13. Exod 12:40 specifies the sojourn as 430 years.

[15:13]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic, with the Qal infinitive absolute followed by the imperfect from יָדַע (yada’, “know”). The imperfect here has an obligatory or imperatival force.

[15:13]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew word גֵּר (ger, “sojourner, stranger”) is related to the verb גּוּר (gur, “to sojourn, to stay for awhile”). Abram’s descendants will stay in a land as resident aliens without rights of citizenship.

[15:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “in a land not theirs.”

[15:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “and they will serve them and they will oppress them.” The verb עִנּוּ, (’innu, a Piel form from עָנָה, ’anah, “to afflict, to oppress, to treat harshly”), is used in Exod 1:11 to describe the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt.

[15:14]  ⁸ tn The participle דָּן (dan, from דִּין, din) is used here for the future: “I am judging” = “I will surely judge.” The judgment in this case will be condemnation and punishment. The translation “execute judgment on” implies that the judgment will certainly be carried out.

[15:15]  ⁹ tn The vav with the pronoun before the verb calls special attention to the subject in contrast to the preceding subject.

[15:15]  ¹⁰ sn You will go to your ancestors. This is a euphemistic expression for death.

[15:15]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in a good old age.”

[15:16]  ¹² sn The term generation is being used here in its widest sense to refer to a full life span. When the chronological factors are considered and the genealogies tabulated, there are four hundred years of bondage. This suggests that in this context a generation is equivalent to one hundred years.

[15:16]  ¹³ tn Heb “they”; the referent (“your descendants”) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[15:16]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “is not yet complete.”

[15:2]  ¹⁵ tn The Hebrew text has אֲדֹנָי יֱהוִה (’adonay yehvih, “Master, Lord”). Since the tetragrammaton (YHWH) usually is pointed with the vowels for the Hebrew word אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “master”) to avoid pronouncing the divine name, that would lead in this place to a repetition of אֲדֹנָי. So the tetragrammaton is here pointed with the vowels for the word אֱלֹהִים (’elohim, “God”) instead. That would produce the reading of the Hebrew as “Master, God” in the Jewish textual tradition. But the presence of “Master” before the holy name is rather compelling evidence that the original would have been “Master, Lord,” which is rendered here “sovereign Lord.”

[15:2]  ¹⁶ tn The vav (ו) disjunctive at the beginning of the clause is circumstantial, expressing the cause or reason.

[15:2]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “I am going.”

[15:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the son of the acquisition of my house.”

[15:2]  ¹⁹ tn The pronoun is anaphoric here, equivalent to the verb “to be” (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 23, §115).

[15:2]  ²⁰ sn The sentence in the Hebrew text employs a very effective wordplay on the name Damascus: “The son of the acquisition (בֶּן־מֶשֶׁק, ben-mesheq) of my house is Eliezer of Damascus (דַּמֶּשֶׁק, dammesheq).” The words are not the same; they have different sibilants. But the sound play gives the impression that “in the nomen is the omen.” Eliezer the Damascene will be Abram’s heir if Abram dies childless because “Damascus” seems to mean that. See M. F. Unger, “Some Comments on the Text of Genesis 15:2-3,” JBL 72 (1953): 49-50; H. L. Ginsberg, “Abram’s ‘Damascene’ Steward,” BASOR 200 (1970): 31-32.

[3:8]  ²¹ tn The Hitpael participle of הָלָךְ (halakh, “to walk, to go”) here has an iterative sense, “moving” or “going about.” While a translation of “walking about” is possible, it assumes a theophany, the presence of the Lord God in a human form. This is more than the text asserts.

[3:8]  ²² tn The expression is traditionally rendered “cool of the day,” because the Hebrew word רוּחַ (ruakh) can mean “wind.” U. Cassuto (Genesis: From Adam to Noah, 152-54) concludes after lengthy discussion that the expression refers to afternoon when it became hot and the sun was beginning to decline. J. J. Niehaus (God at Sinai [SOTBT], 155-57) offers a different interpretation of the phrase, relating יוֹם (yom, usually understood as “day”) to an Akkadian cognate umu (“storm”) and translates the phrase “in the wind of the storm.” If Niehaus is correct, then God is not pictured as taking an afternoon stroll through the orchard, but as coming in a powerful windstorm to confront the man and woman with their rebellion. In this case קוֹל יְהוָה (qol yÿhvah, “sound of the Lord”) may refer to God’s thunderous roar, which typically accompanies his appearance in the storm to do battle or render judgment (e.g., see Ps 29).

[3:8]  ²³ tn The verb used here is the Hitpael, giving the reflexive idea (“they hid themselves”). In v. 10, when Adam answers the Lord, the Niphal form is used with the same sense: “I hid.”

[3:9]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew verb קָרָא (qara’, “to call”) followed by the preposition אֶל־ or לְ (’el- or lÿ, “to, unto”) often carries the connotation of “summon.”

[3:9]  ²⁵ sn Where are you? The question is probably rhetorical (a figure of speech called erotesis) rather than literal, because it was spoken to the man, who answers it with an explanation of why he was hiding rather than a location. The question has more the force of “Why are you hiding?”