Genesis 19:32-35

19:32 Come, let’s make our father drunk with wine ¹  so we can have sexual relations ²  with him and preserve ³  our family line through our father.” ⁴ 

19:33 So that night they made their father drunk with wine, ⁵  and the older daughter ⁶  came and had sexual relations with her father. ⁷  But he was not aware that she had sexual relations with him and then got up. ⁸  19:34 So in the morning the older daughter ⁹  said to the younger, “Since I had sexual relations with my father last night, let’s make him drunk again tonight. ¹⁰  Then you go and have sexual relations with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” ¹¹  19:35 So they made their father drunk ¹²  that night as well, and the younger one came and had sexual relations with him. ¹³  But he was not aware that she had sexual relations with him and then got up. ¹⁴ 

Genesis 19:2

19:2 He said, “Here, my lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house. Stay the night ¹⁵  and wash your feet. Then you can be on your way early in the morning.” ¹⁶  “No,” they replied, “we’ll spend the night in the town square.” ¹⁷ 

Genesis 11:13

11:13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other ¹⁸  sons and daughters. ¹⁹ 

Genesis 13:1

Abram’s Solution to the Strife

13:1 So Abram went up from Egypt into the Negev. ²⁰  He took his wife and all his possessions with him, as well as Lot. ²¹ 

Jeremiah 25:15

Judah and the Nations Will Experience God’s Wrath

25:15 So ²²  the Lord, the God of Israel, spoke to me in a vision. ²³  “Take this cup from my hand. It is filled with the wine of my wrath. ²⁴  Take it and make the nations to whom I send you drink it.

Jeremiah 51:7

51:7 Babylonia had been a gold cup in the Lord’s hand.

She had made the whole world drunk.

The nations had drunk from the wine of her wrath. ²⁵ 

So they have all gone mad. ²⁶ 

Revelation 17:2

17:2 with whom the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality and the earth’s inhabitants got drunk with the wine of her immorality.” ²⁷ 

Revelation 17:6

17:6 I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of those who testified to Jesus. ²⁸  I ²⁹  was greatly astounded ³⁰  when I saw her.

Revelation 18:3

18:3 For all the nations ³¹  have fallen ³²  from

the wine of her immoral passion, ³³ 

and the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality with her,

and the merchants of the earth have gotten rich from the power of her sensual behavior.” ³⁴ 

[19:32]  ¹ tn Heb “drink wine.”

[19:32]  ² tn Heb “and we will lie down.” The cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive is subordinated to the preceding cohortative and indicates purpose/result.

[19:32]  ³ tn Or “that we may preserve.” Here the cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates their ultimate goal.

[19:32]  ⁴ tn Heb “and we will keep alive from our father descendants.”

[19:33]  ⁵ tn Heb “drink wine.”

[19:33]  ⁶ tn Heb “the firstborn.”

[19:33]  ⁷ tn Heb “and the firstborn came and lied down with her father.” The expression “lied down with” here and in the following verses is a euphemism for sexual relations.

[19:33]  ⁸ tn Heb “and he did not know when she lay down and when she arose.”

[19:34]  ⁹ tn Heb “the firstborn.”

[19:34]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Look, I lied down with my father. Let’s make him drink wine again tonight.”

[19:34]  ¹¹ tn Heb “And go, lie down with him and we will keep alive from our father descendants.”

[19:35]  ¹² tn Heb “drink wine.”

[19:35]  ¹³ tn Heb “lied down with him.”

[19:35]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “And he did not know when she lied down and when she arose.”

[19:2]  ¹⁵ tn The imperatives have the force of invitation.

[19:2]  ¹⁶ tn These two verbs form a verbal hendiadys: “you can rise up early and go” means “you can go early.”

[19:2]  ¹⁷ sn The town square refers to the wide street area at the gate complex of the city.

[11:13]  ¹⁸ tn The word “other” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied for stylistic reasons.

[11:13]  ¹⁹ tc The reading of the MT is followed in vv. 11-12; the LXX reads, “And [= when] Arphaxad had lived thirty-five years, [and] he fathered [= became the father of] Cainan. And after he fathered [= became the father of] Cainan, Arphaxad lived four hundred and thirty years and fathered [= had] [other] sons and daughters, and [then] he died. And [= when] Cainan had lived one hundred and thirty years, [and] he fathered [= became the father of] Sala [= Shelah]. And after he fathered [= became the father of] Sala [= Shelah], Cainan lived three hundred and thirty years and fathered [= had] [other] sons and daughters, and [then] he died.” See also the note on “Shelah” in Gen 10:24; the LXX reading also appears to lie behind Luke 3:35-36.

[13:1]  ²⁰ tn Or “the South [country]” (also in v. 3).

[13:1]  ²¹ tn Heb “And Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all which was his, and Lot with him, to the Negev.”

[25:15]  ²² tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) which is probably being used in the sense that BDB 473-74 s.v. כִּי 3.c notes, i.e., the causal connection is somewhat loose, related here to the prophecies against the nations. “So” seems to be the most appropriate way to represent this.

[25:15]  ²³ tn Heb “Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel, to me.” It is generally understood that the communication is visionary. God does not have a “hand” and the action of going to the nations and making them drink of the cup are scarcely literal. The words are supplied in the translation to show the figurative nature of this passage.

[25:15]  ²⁴ sn “Drinking from the cup of wrath” is a common figure to represent being punished by God. Isaiah had used it earlier to refer to the punishment which Judah was to suffer and from which God would deliver her (Isa 51:17, 22) and Jeremiah’s contemporary Habakkuk uses it of Babylon “pouring out its wrath” on the nations and in turn being forced to drink the bitter cup herself (Hab 2:15-16). In Jer 51:7 the Lord will identify Babylon as the cup which makes the nations stagger. In v. 16 drinking from the cup will be identified with the sword (i.e., wars) that the Lord will send against the nations. Babylon is also to be identified as the sword (cf. Jer 51:20-23). What is being alluded to here in highly figurative language is the judgment that the Lord will wreak on the nations listed here through the Babylonians. The prophecy given here in symbolical form is thus an expansion of the one in vv. 9-11.

[51:7]  ²⁵ tn The words “of her wrath” are not in the Hebrew text but are supplied in the translation to help those readers who are not familiar with the figure of the “cup of the Lord’s wrath.”

[51:7]  ²⁶ tn Heb “upon the grounds of such conditions the nations have gone mad.”

[17:2]  ²⁷ tn This is the same word translated “sexual immorality” earlier in the verse, but here the qualifier “sexual” has not been repeated for stylistic reasons.

[17:6]  ²⁸ tn Or “of the witnesses to Jesus.” Here the genitive ᾿Ιησοῦ (Ihsou) is taken as an objective genitive; Jesus is the object of their testimony.

[17:6]  ²⁹ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[17:6]  ³⁰ tn Grk “I marveled a great marvel” (an idiom for great astonishment).

[18:3]  ³¹ tn Or “all the Gentiles” (the same Greek word may be translated “Gentiles” or “nations”).

[18:3]  ³² tc ‡ Several mss (א A C 1006* 1611 1841 2030 Ï^K), including the best witnesses, read “have fallen” (πεπτώκασιν or πέπτωκαν [peptwkasin or peptwkan]). The singular πέπτωκεν (peptwken), which is better grammatically with the neuter plural subject πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (panta ta eqnh, “all the nations”), is read by 1854 2062 pc; 2042 pc read πεπότικεν (pepotiken). A few mss (1006^c 2329 pc latt sy^h) read “have drunk” (πέπωκαν/πεπώκασιν, pepwkan/pepwkasin); the singular πέπωκεν (pepwken) is read by P 051 1 2053* al. The more difficult reading and that which has the best ms support is “have fallen.” That it is not too difficult is evidenced by the fact that the great majority of Byzantine minuscules, which have a tendency to smooth out problems, left it stand as is. Nonetheless, it is somewhat difficult (TCGNT 683 says that this reading is “scarcely suitable in the context”), and for that reason certain mss seem to have changed it to “have drunk” to agree with the idea of “wine” (οἴνου, oinou). One can understand how this could happen: A scribe coming to the text and seeing the term “wine” expects a verb of drinking. When he sees “have fallen” and knows that in Greek the verbs “have fallen” and “have drunk” are spelled similarly, he concludes that there has been a slip of the pen in the ms he is using, which he then seeks to correct back to the “have drunk” reading. This appears to be more reasonable than to conclude that three early uncials (i.e., א A C) as well as a great number of other witnesses all felt the need to change “have drunk” (πέπωκαν) to “have fallen” (πέπτωκαν), even if “fallen” occurs in the immediate context (“fallen, fallen, [ἔπεσεν ἔπεσεν, epesen epesen] Babylon the great” in the preceding verse). The preferred reading, on both external and internal grounds, is “have fallen,” and thus the Seer intends to focus on the effects of wine, namely, a drunken stupor.

[18:3]  ³³ tn See the notes on the words “passion” in Rev 14:8 and “wrath” in 16:19.

[18:3]  ³⁴ tn According to BDAG 949 s.v. στρῆνος and στρηνιάω, these terms can refer either to luxury or sensuality. In the context of Rev 18, however (as L&N 88.254 indicate) the stress is on gratification of the senses by sexual immorality, so that meaning was emphasized in the translation here.