Genesis 11:7

11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse ¹  their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” ² 

Genesis 18:16

Abraham Pleads for Sodom

18:16 When the men got up to leave, ³  they looked out over ⁴  Sodom. (Now ⁵  Abraham was walking with them to see them on their way.) ⁶ 

Genesis 31:49

31:49 It was also called Mizpah ⁷  because he said, “May the Lord watch ⁸  between us ⁹  when we are out of sight of one another. ¹⁰ 

Genesis 32:24

32:24 So Jacob was left alone. Then a man ¹¹  wrestled ¹²  with him until daybreak. ¹³ 

Genesis 34:20

34:20 So Hamor and his son Shechem went to the gate ¹⁴  of their city and spoke to the men of their city,

Genesis 39:2

39:2 The Lord was with Joseph. He was successful ¹⁵  and lived ¹⁶  in the household of his Egyptian master.

Genesis 42:30

42:30 “The man, the lord of the land, spoke harshly to us and treated us ¹⁷  as if we were ¹⁸  spying on the land.

[11:7]  ¹ tn The cohortatives mirror the cohortatives of the people. They build to ascend the heavens; God comes down to destroy their language. God speaks here to his angelic assembly. See the notes on the word “make” in 1:26 and “know” in 3:5, as well as Jub. 10:22-23, where an angel recounts this incident and says “And the Lord our God said to us…. And the Lord went down and we went down with him. And we saw the city and the tower which the sons of men built.” On the chiastic structure of the story, see G. J. Wenham, Genesis (WBC), 1:235.

[11:7]  ² tn Heb “they will not hear, a man the lip of his neighbor.”

[18:16]  ³ tn Heb “And the men arose from there.”

[18:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “toward the face of.”

[18:16]  ⁵ tn The disjunctive parenthetical clause sets the stage for the following speech.

[18:16]  ⁶ tn The Piel of שָׁלַח (shalakh) means “to lead out, to send out, to expel”; here it is used in the friendly sense of seeing the visitors on their way.

[31:49]  ⁵ tn Heb “and Mizpah.”

[31:49]  ⁶ sn The name Mizpah (מִצְפָּה, mitspah), which means “watchpost,” sounds like the verb translated “may he watch” (יִצֶף, yitsef). Neither Laban nor Jacob felt safe with each other, and so they agreed to go their separate ways, trusting the Lord to keep watch at the border. Jacob did not need this treaty, but Laban, perhaps because he had lost his household gods, felt he did.

[31:49]  ⁷ tn Heb “between me and you.”

[31:49]  ⁸ tn Heb “for we will be hidden, each man from his neighbor.”

[32:24]  ⁷ sn Reflecting Jacob’s perspective at the beginning of the encounter, the narrator calls the opponent simply “a man.” Not until later in the struggle does Jacob realize his true identity.

[32:24]  ⁸ sn The verb translated “wrestled” (וַיֵּאָבֵק, vayye’aveq) sounds in Hebrew like the names “Jacob” (יַעֲקֹב, ya’aqov) and “Jabbok” (יַבֹּק, yabboq). In this way the narrator links the setting, the main action, and the main participant together in the mind of the reader or hearer.

[32:24]  ⁹ tn Heb “until the rising of the dawn.”

[34:20]  ⁹ sn The gate. In an ancient Near Eastern city the gate complex was the location for conducting important public business.

[39:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and he was a prosperous man.” This does not mean that Joseph became wealthy, but that he was successful in what he was doing, or making progress in his situation (see 24:21).

[39:2]  ¹² tn Heb “and he was.”

[42:30]  ¹³ tn Heb “made us.”

[42:30]  ¹⁴ tn The words “if we were” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.