Genesis 37:35

37:35 All his sons and daughters stood by ¹  him to console him, but he refused to be consoled. “No,” he said, “I will go to the grave mourning my son.” ²  So Joseph’s ³  father wept for him.

Genesis 37:2

37:2 This is the account of Jacob.

Joseph, his seventeen-year-old son, ⁴  was taking care of ⁵  the flocks with his brothers. Now he was a youngster ⁶  working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. ⁷  Joseph brought back a bad report about them ⁸  to their father.

Genesis 12:16-18

12:16 and he did treat Abram well ⁹  on account of her. Abram received ¹⁰  sheep and cattle, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

12:17 But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with severe diseases ¹¹  because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 12:18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram and said, “What is this ¹²  you have done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife?

Genesis 12:1

The Obedience of Abram

12:1 Now the Lord said ¹³  to Abram, ¹⁴ 

“Go out ¹⁵  from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household

to the land that I will show you. ¹⁶ 

Colossians 2:15

2:15 Disarming ¹⁷  the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross. ¹⁸ 

[37:35]  ¹ tn Heb “arose, stood”; which here suggests that they stood by him in his time of grief.

[37:35]  ² tn Heb “and he said, ‘Indeed I will go down to my son mourning to Sheol.’” Sheol was viewed as the place where departed spirits went after death.

[37:35]  ³ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Joseph) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[37:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “a son of seventeen years.” The word “son” is in apposition to the name “Joseph.”

[37:2]  ⁵ tn Or “tending”; Heb “shepherding” or “feeding.”

[37:2]  ⁶ tn Or perhaps “a helper.” The significance of this statement is unclear. It may mean “now the lad was with,” or it may suggest Joseph was like a servant to them.

[37:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “and he [was] a young man with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zilpah, the wives of his father.”

[37:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “their bad report.” The pronoun is an objective genitive, specifying that the bad or damaging report was about the brothers.

[12:16]  ⁹ sn He did treat Abram well. The construction of the parenthetical disjunctive clause, beginning with the conjunction on the prepositional phrase, draws attention to the irony of the story. Abram wanted Sarai to lie “so that it would go well” with him. Though he lost Sarai to Pharaoh, it did go well for him – he received a lavish bride price. See also G. W. Coats, “Despoiling the Egyptians,” VT 18 (1968): 450-57.

[12:16]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and there was to him.”

[12:17]  ¹¹ tn The cognate accusative adds emphasis to the verbal sentence: “he plagued with great plagues,” meaning the Lord inflicted numerous plagues, probably diseases (see Exod 15:26). The adjective “great” emphasizes that the plagues were severe and overwhelming.

[12:18]  ¹² tn The demonstrative pronoun translated “this” adds emphasis: “What in the world have you done to me?” (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 24, §118).

[12:1]  ¹³ sn The Lord called Abram while he was in Ur (see Gen 15:7; Acts 7:2); but the sequence here makes it look like it was after the family left to migrate to Canaan (11:31-32). Genesis records the call of Abram at this place in the narrative because it is the formal beginning of the account of Abram. The record of Terah was brought to its end before this beginning.

[12:1]  ¹⁴ tn The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh-lÿkha, “go out”) followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”). If Abram leaves, then God will do these three things. The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) is subordinated to the preceding cohortatives and indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram. On the syntactical structure of vv. 1-2 see R. B. Chisholm, “Evidence from Genesis,” A Case for Premillennialism, 37. For a similar sequence of volitive forms see Gen 45:18.

[12:1]  ¹⁵ tn The initial command is the direct imperative (לֶךְ, lekh) from the verb הָלַךְ (halakh). It is followed by the lamed preposition with a pronominal suffix (לְךָ, lÿkha) emphasizing the subject of the imperative: “you leave.”

[12:1]  ¹⁶ sn To the land that I will show you. The call of Abram illustrates the leading of the Lord. The command is to leave. The Lord’s word is very specific about what Abram is to leave (the three prepositional phrases narrow to his father’s household), but is not specific at all about where he is to go. God required faith, a point that Heb 11:8 notes.

[2:15]  ¹⁷ tn See BDAG 100 s.v. ἀπεκδύομαι 2.

[2:15]  ¹⁸ tn The antecedent of the Greek pronoun αὐτῷ (autw) could either be “Christ” or the “cross.” There are several reasons for choosing “the cross” as the antecedent for αὐτῷ in verse 15: (1) The nearest antecedent is τῷ σταυρῷ (tw staurw) in v. 14; (2) the idea of ἐδειγμάτισεν ἐν παρρησία (edeigmatisen en parrhsia, “made a public disgrace”) seems to be more in keeping with the idea of the cross; (3) a reference to Christ seems to miss the irony involved in the idea of triumph – the whole point is that where one would expect defeat, there came the victory; (4) if Christ is the subject of the participles in v. 15 then almost certainly the cross is the referent for αὐτῷ. Thus the best solution is to see αὐτῷ as a reference to the cross and the preposition ἐν (en) indicating “means” (i.e., by means of the cross) or possibly (though less likely) location (on the cross).