Genesis 12:13

12:13 So tell them ¹  you are my sister ²  so that it may go well ³  for me because of you and my life will be spared ⁴  on account of you.”

Psalms 119:175

119:175 May I ⁵  live and praise you!

May your regulations help me! ⁶ 

Isaiah 55:3

55:3 Pay attention and come to me!

Listen, so you can live! ⁷ 

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ⁸  you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ⁹ 

[12:13]  ¹ tn Heb “say.”

[12:13]  ² sn Tell them you are my sister. Abram’s motives may not be as selfish as they appear. He is aware of the danger to the family. His method of dealing with it is deception with a half truth, for Sarai really was his sister – but the Egyptians would not know that. Abram presumably thought that there would be negotiations for a marriage by anyone interested (as Laban does later for his sister Rebekah), giving him time to react. But the plan backfires because Pharaoh does not take the time to negotiate. There is a good deal of literature on the wife-sister issue. See (among others) E. A. Speiser, “The Wife-Sister Motif in the Patriarchal Narratives,” Oriental and Biblical Studies, 62-81; C. J. Mullo-Weir, “The Alleged Hurrian Wife-Sister Motif in Genesis,” GOT 22 (1967-1970): 14-25.

[12:13]  ³ tn The Hebrew verb translated “go well” can encompass a whole range of favorable treatment, but the following clause indicates it means here that Abram’s life will be spared.

[12:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “and my life will live.”

[119:175]  ⁵ tn Heb “my life.”

[119:175]  ⁶ tn God’s regulations will “help” the psalmist by giving him moral and ethical guidance.

[55:3]  ⁷ tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.

[55:3]  ⁸ tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”

[55:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”