Deuteronomy 28:4

28:4 Your children ¹  will be blessed, as well as the produce of your soil, the offspring of your livestock, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks.

Deuteronomy 28:11

28:11 The Lord will greatly multiply your children, ²  the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your soil in the land which he ³  promised your ancestors ⁴  he would give you.

Exodus 23:26-33

23:26 No woman will miscarry her young ⁵  or be barren in your land. I will fulfill ⁶  the number of your days.

23:27 “I will send my terror ⁷  before you, and I will destroy ⁸  all the people whom you encounter; I will make all your enemies turn their backs ⁹  to you. 23:28 I will send ¹⁰  hornets before you that will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite before you. 23:29 I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals ¹¹  multiply against you. 23:30 Little by little ¹²  I will drive them out before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land. 23:31 I will set ¹³  your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River, ¹⁴  for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.

23:32 “You must make no covenant with them or with their gods. 23:33 They must not live in your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare ¹⁵  to you.”

Leviticus 26:9

26:9 I will turn to you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and maintain ¹⁶  my covenant with you.

Psalms 127:3

127:3 Yes, ¹⁷  sons ¹⁸  are a gift from the Lord,

the fruit of the womb is a reward.

[28:4]  ¹ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[28:11]  ² tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “will give you a lot of children.”

[28:11]  ³ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 36, 64).

[23:26]  ⁵ tn Or “abort”; Heb “cast.”

[23:26]  ⁶ sn No one will die prematurely; this applies to the individual or the nation. The plan of God to bless was extensive, if only the people would obey.

[23:27]  ⁷ tn The word for “terror” is אֵימָתִי (’emati); the word has the thought of “panic” or “dread.” God would make the nations panic as they heard of the exploits and knew the Israelites were drawing near. U. Cassuto thinks the reference to “hornets” in v. 28 may be a reference to this fear, an unreasoning dread, rather than to another insect invasion (Exodus, 308). Others suggest it is symbolic of an invading army or a country like Egypt or literal insects (see E. Neufeld, “Insects as Warfare Agents in the Ancient Near East,” Or 49 [1980]: 30-57).

[23:27]  ⁸ tn Heb “kill.”

[23:27]  ⁹ tn The text has “and I will give all your enemies to you [as] a back.” The verb of making takes two accusatives, the second being the adverbial accusative of product (see GKC 371-72 §117.ii, n. 1).

[23:28]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and I will send.”

[23:29]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the beast of the field.”

[23:30]  ¹² tn The repetition expresses an exceptional or super-fine quality (see GKC 396 §123.e).

[23:31]  ¹³ tn The form is a perfect tense with vav consecutive.

[23:31]  ¹⁴ tn In the Hebrew Bible “the River” usually refers to the Euphrates (cf. NASB, NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT). There is some thought that it refers to a river Nahr el Kebir between Lebanon and Syria. See further W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “Exodus,” EBC 2:447; and G. W. Buchanan, The Consequences of the Covenant (NovTSup), 91-100.

[23:33]  ¹⁵ tn The idea of the “snare” is to lure them to judgment; God is apparently warning about contact with the Canaanites, either in worship or in business. They were very syncretistic, and so it would be dangerous to settle among them.

[26:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “cause to arise,” but probably used here for the Lord’s intention of confirming or maintaining the covenant commitment made at Sinai. Cf. KJV “establish”; NASB “will confirm”; NAB “carry out”; NIV “will keep.”

[127:3]  ¹⁷ tn or “look.”

[127:3]  ¹⁸ tn Some prefer to translate this term with the gender neutral “children,” but “sons” are plainly in view here, as the following verses make clear. Daughters are certainly wonderful additions to a family, but in ancient Israelite culture sons were the “arrows” that gave a man security in his old age, for they could defend the family interests at the city gate, where the legal and economic issues of the community were settled.