Genesis 12:18-19

12:18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram and said, “What is this ¹  you have done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife? 12:19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her ²  to be my wife? ³  Here is your wife! ⁴  Take her and go!” ⁵ 

Genesis 17:15

17:15 Then God said to Abraham, “As for your wife, you must no longer call her Sarai; ⁶  Sarah ⁷  will be her name.

Genesis 18:10

18:10 One of them ⁸  said, “I will surely return ⁹  to you when the season comes round again, ¹⁰  and your wife Sarah will have a son!” ¹¹  (Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, not far behind him. ¹² 

Genesis 26:10

26:10 Then Abimelech exclaimed, “What in the world have you done to us? ¹³  One of the men ¹⁴  might easily have had sexual relations with ¹⁵  your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us!”

Genesis 3:17

3:17 But to Adam ¹⁶  he said,

“Because you obeyed ¹⁷  your wife

and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,

‘You must not eat from it,’

cursed is the ground ¹⁸  thanks to you; ¹⁹ 

in painful toil you will eat ²⁰  of it all the days of your life.

Genesis 17:19

17:19 God said, “No, Sarah your wife is going to bear you a son, and you will name him Isaac. ²¹  I will confirm my covenant with him as a perpetual ²²  covenant for his descendants after him.

Genesis 19:15

19:15 At dawn ²³  the angels hurried Lot along, saying, “Get going! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, ²⁴  or else you will be destroyed when the city is judged!” ²⁵ 

Genesis 26:9

26:9 So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, “She is really ²⁶  your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac replied, “Because I thought someone might kill me to get her.” ²⁷ 

[12:18]  ¹ tn The demonstrative pronoun translated “this” adds emphasis: “What in the world have you done to me?” (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 24, §118).

[12:19]  ² tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive here expresses consequence.

[12:19]  ³ tn Heb “to me for a wife.”

[12:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “Look, your wife!”

[12:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “take and go.”

[17:15]  ³ tn Heb “[As for] Sarai your wife, you must not call her name Sarai, for Sarah [will be] her name.”

[17:15]  ⁴ sn Sarah. The name change seems to be a dialectical variation, both spellings meaning “princess” or “queen.” Like the name Abram, the name Sarai symbolized the past. The new name Sarah, like the name Abraham, would be a reminder of what God intended to do for Sarah in the future.

[18:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (one of the three men introduced in v. 2) has been specified in the translation for clarity. Some English translations have specified the referent as the Lord (cf. RSV, NIV) based on vv. 1, 13, but the Hebrew text merely has “he said” at this point, referring to one of the three visitors. Aside from the introductory statement in v. 1, the incident is narrated from Abraham’s point of view, and the suspense is built up for the reader as Abraham’s elaborate banquet preparations in the preceding verses suggest he suspects these are important guests. But not until the promise of a son later in this verse does it become clear who is speaking. In v. 13 the Hebrew text explicitly mentions the Lord.

[18:10]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic, using the infinitive absolute with the imperfect tense.

[18:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “as/when the time lives” or “revives,” possibly referring to the springtime.

[18:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “and there will be (הִנֵּה, hinneh) a son for Sarah.”

[18:10]  ⁸ tn This is the first of two disjunctive parenthetical clauses preparing the reader for Sarah’s response (see v. 12).

[26:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “What is this you have done to us?” The Hebrew demonstrative pronoun “this” adds emphasis: “What in the world have you done to us?” (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 24, §118).

[26:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “people.”

[26:10]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew verb means “to lie down.” Here the expression “lie with” or “sleep with” is euphemistic for “have sexual relations with.”

[3:17]  ⁶ tn Since there is no article on the word, the personal name is used, rather than the generic “the man” (cf. NRSV).

[3:17]  ⁷ tn The idiom “listen to the voice of” often means “obey.” The man “obeyed” his wife and in the process disobeyed God.

[3:17]  ⁸ sn For the ground to be cursed means that it will no longer yield its bounty as the blessing from God had promised. The whole creation, Paul writes in Rom 8:22, is still groaning under this curse, waiting for the day of redemption.

[3:17]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew phrase בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ (ba’avurekha) is more literally translated “on your account” or “because of you.” The idiomatic “thanks to you” in the translation tries to capture the point of this expression.

[3:17]  ¹⁰ sn In painful toil you will eat. The theme of eating is prominent throughout Gen 3. The prohibition was against eating from the tree of knowledge. The sin was in eating. The interrogation concerned the eating from the tree of knowledge. The serpent is condemned to eat the dust of the ground. The curse focuses on eating in a “measure for measure” justice. Because the man and the woman sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, God will forbid the ground to cooperate, and so it will be through painful toil that they will eat.

[17:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “will call his name Isaac.” The name means “he laughs,” or perhaps “may he laugh” (see the note on the word “laughed” in v. 17).

[17:19]  ⁸ tn Or “as an eternal.”

[19:15]  ⁸ tn Heb “When dawn came up.”

[19:15]  ⁹ tn Heb “who are found.” The wording might imply he had other daughters living in the city, but the text does not explicitly state this.

[19:15]  ¹⁰ tn Or “with the iniquity [i.e., punishment] of the city” (cf. NASB, NRSV).

[26:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “Surely, look!” See N. H. Snaith, “The meaning of Hebrew ‘ak,” VT 14 (1964): 221-25.

[26:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Because I said, ‘Lest I die on account of her.’” Since the verb “said” probably means “said to myself” (i.e., “thought”) here, the direct discourse in the Hebrew statement has been converted to indirect discourse in the translation. In addition the simple prepositional phrase “on account of her” has been clarified in the translation as “to get her” (cf. v. 7).