Genesis 18:19

18:19 I have chosen him ¹  so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep ²  the way of the Lord by doing ³  what is right and just. Then the Lord will give ⁴  to Abraham what he promised ⁵  him.”

Genesis 26:3-5

26:3 Stay ⁶  in this land. Then I will be with you and will bless you, ⁷  for I will give all these lands to you and to your descendants, ⁸  and I will fulfill ⁹  the solemn promise I made ¹⁰  to your father Abraham. 26:4 I will multiply your descendants so they will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give them ¹¹  all these lands. All the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants. ¹²  26:5 All this will come to pass ¹³  because Abraham obeyed me ¹⁴  and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” ¹⁵ 

Genesis 32:28

32:28 “No longer will your name be Jacob,” the man told him, ¹⁶  “but Israel, ¹⁷  because you have fought ¹⁸  with God and with men and have prevailed.”

Deuteronomy 4:37

4:37 Moreover, because he loved ¹⁹  your ancestors, he chose their ²⁰  descendants who followed them and personally brought you out of Egypt with his great power

Joshua 24:31

24:31 Israel worshiped ²¹  the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime and as long as the elderly men who outlived him remained alive. ²²  These men had experienced firsthand everything the Lord had done for Israel. ²³ 

Psalms 105:6

105:6 O children ²⁴  of Abraham, ²⁵  God’s ²⁶  servant,

you descendants ²⁷  of Jacob, God’s ²⁸  chosen ones!

Isaiah 41:8

The Lord Encourages His People

41:8 “You, my servant Israel,

Jacob whom I have chosen,

offspring of Abraham my friend, ²⁹ 

[18:19]  ¹ tn Heb “For I have known him.” The verb יָדַע (yada’) here means “to recognize and treat in a special manner, to choose” (see Amos 3:2). It indicates that Abraham stood in a special covenantal relationship with the Lord.

[18:19]  ² tn Heb “and they will keep.” The perfect verbal form with vav consecutive carries on the subjective nuance of the preceding imperfect verbal form (translated “so that he may command”).

[18:19]  ³ tn The infinitive construct here indicates manner, explaining how Abraham’s children and his household will keep the way of the Lord.

[18:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “bring on.” The infinitive after לְמַעַן (lÿma’an) indicates result here.

[18:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “spoke to.”

[26:3]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew verb גּוּר (gur) means “to live temporarily without ownership of land.” Abraham’s family will not actually possess the land of Canaan until the Israelite conquest hundreds of years later.

[26:3]  ⁷ tn After the imperative “stay” the two prefixed verb forms with prefixed conjunction here indicate consequence.

[26:3]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew term זֶרַע (zera’) occurring here and in v. 18 may mean “seed” (for planting), “offspring” (occasionally of animals, but usually of people), or “descendants” depending on the context.

[26:3]  ⁹ tn The Hiphil stem of the verb קוּם (qum) here means “to fulfill, to bring to realization.” For other examples of this use of this verb form, see Lev 26:9; Num 23:19; Deut 8:18; 9:5; 1 Sam 1:23; 1 Kgs 6:12; Jer 11:5.

[26:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the oath which I swore.”

[26:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “your descendants.”

[26:4]  ¹² tn Traditionally the verb is taken as passive (“will be blessed”) here, as if Abraham’s descendants were going to be a channel or source of blessing to the nations. But the Hitpael is better understood here as reflexive/reciprocal, “will bless [i.e., pronounce blessings on] themselves/one another” (see also Gen 22:18). Elsewhere the Hitpael of the verb “to bless” is used with a reflexive/reciprocal sense in Deut 29:18; Ps 72:17; Isa 65:16; Jer 4:2. Gen 12:2 predicts that Abram will be held up as a paradigm of divine blessing and that people will use his name in their blessing formulae. For examples of blessing formulae utilizing an individual as an example of blessing see Gen 48:20 and Ruth 4:11. Earlier formulations of this promise (see Gen 12:2; 18:18) use the Niphal stem. (See also Gen 28:14.)

[26:5]  ¹³ tn The words “All this will come to pass” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied for stylistic reasons.

[26:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “listened to my voice.”

[26:5]  ¹⁵ sn My charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. The language of this verse is clearly interpretive, for Abraham did not have all these laws. The terms are legal designations for sections of the Mosaic law and presuppose the existence of the law. Some Rabbinic views actually conclude that Abraham had fulfilled the whole law before it was given (see m. Qiddushin 4:14). Some scholars argue that this story could only have been written after the law was given (C. Westermann, Genesis, 2:424-25). But the simplest explanation is that the narrator (traditionally taken to be Moses the Lawgiver) elaborated on the simple report of Abraham’s obedience by using terms with which the Israelites were familiar. In this way he depicts Abraham as the model of obedience to God’s commands, whose example Israel should follow.

[32:28]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and he said.” The referent of the pronoun “he” (the man who wrestled with Jacob) has been specified for clarity, and the order of the introductory clause and the direct discourse has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[32:28]  ¹⁷ sn The name Israel is a common construction, using a verb with a theophoric element (אֵל, ’el) that usually indicates the subject of the verb. Here it means “God fights.” This name will replace the name Jacob; it will be both a promise and a call for faith. In essence, the Lord was saying that Jacob would have victory and receive the promises because God would fight for him.

[32:28]  ¹⁸ sn You have fought. The explanation of the name Israel includes a sound play. In Hebrew the verb translated “you have fought” (שָׂרִיתָ, sarita) sounds like the name “Israel” (יִשְׂרָאֵל, yisra’el ), meaning “God fights” (although some interpret the meaning as “he fights [with] God”). The name would evoke the memory of the fight and what it meant. A. Dillmann says that ever after this the name would tell the Israelites that, when Jacob contended successfully with God, he won the battle with man (Genesis, 2:279). To be successful with God meant that he had to be crippled in his own self-sufficiency (A. P. Ross, “Jacob at the Jabboq, Israel at Peniel,” BSac 142 [1985]: 51-62).

[4:37]  ¹⁹ tn The concept of love here is not primarily that of emotional affection but of commitment or devotion. This verse suggests that God chose Israel to be his special people because he loved the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) and had promised to bless their descendants. See as well Deut 7:7-9.

[4:37]  ²⁰ tc The LXX, Smr, Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate read a third person masculine plural suffix for the MT’s 3rd person masculine singular, “his descendants.” Cf. Deut 10:15. Quite likely the MT should be emended in this instance.

[24:31]  ²¹ tn Or “served.”

[24:31]  ²² tn Heb “all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived him.”

[24:31]  ²³ tn Heb “who knew all the work of the Lord which he had done for Israel.”

[105:6]  ²⁴ tn Or “offspring”; Heb “seed.”

[105:6]  ²⁵ tc Some mss have “Israel,” which appears in the parallel version of this psalm in 1 Chr 16:13.

[105:6]  ²⁶ tn Heb “his”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[105:6]  ²⁷ tn Heb “sons.”

[105:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “his”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[41:8]  ²⁹ tn Or perhaps, “covenantal partner” (see 1 Kgs 5:15 HT [5:1 ET]; 2 Chr 20:7).