Genesis 17:19

17:19 God said, “No, Sarah your wife is going to bear you a son, and you will name him Isaac. ¹  I will confirm my covenant with him as a perpetual ²  covenant for his descendants after him.

Genesis 22:2-3

22:2 God ³  said, “Take your son – your only son, whom you love, Isaac ⁴  – and go to the land of Moriah! ⁵  Offer him up there as a burnt offering ⁶  on one of the mountains which I will indicate to ⁷  you.”

22:3 Early in the morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. ⁸  He took two of his young servants with him, along with his son Isaac. When he had cut the wood for the burnt offering, he started out ⁹  for the place God had spoken to him about.

Genesis 22:9

22:9 When they came to the place God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there ¹⁰  and arranged the wood on it. Next he tied up ¹¹  his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood.

Genesis 26:8-9

26:8 After Isaac ¹²  had been there a long time, ¹³  Abimelech king of the Philistines happened to look out a window and observed ¹⁴  Isaac caressing ¹⁵  his wife Rebekah. 26:9 So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, “She is really ¹⁶  your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac replied, “Because I thought someone might kill me to get her.” ¹⁷ 

Genesis 26:18

26:18 Isaac reopened ¹⁸  the wells that had been dug ¹⁹  back in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up ²⁰  after Abraham died. Isaac ²¹  gave these wells ²²  the same names his father had given them. ²³ 

Genesis 27:33

27:33 Isaac began to shake violently ²⁴  and asked, “Then who else hunted game and brought it to me? I ate all of it just before you arrived, and I blessed him. ²⁵  He will indeed be blessed!”

Genesis 27:37

27:37 Isaac replied to Esau, “Look! I have made him lord over you. I have made all his relatives his servants and provided him with grain and new wine. What is left that I can do for you, my son?”

Genesis 27:46

27:46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am deeply depressed ²⁶  because of these daughters of Heth. ²⁷  If Jacob were to marry one of these daughters of Heth who live in this land, I would want to die!” ²⁸ 

Genesis 28:6

28:6 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him off to Paddan Aram to find a wife there. ²⁹  As he blessed him, ³⁰  Isaac commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.” ³¹ 

Genesis 28:13

28:13 and the Lord stood at its top. He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac. ³²  I will give you and your descendants the ground ³³  you are lying on.

Genesis 31:18

31:18 He took ³⁴  away all the livestock he had acquired in Paddan Aram and all his moveable property that he had accumulated. Then he set out toward the land of Canaan to return to his father Isaac. ³⁵ 

Genesis 31:42

31:42 If the God of my father – the God of Abraham, the one whom Isaac fears ³⁶  – had not been with me, you would certainly have sent me away empty-handed! But God saw how I was oppressed and how hard I worked, ³⁷  and he rebuked you last night.”

[17:19]  ¹ 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]  ² tn Or “as an eternal.”

[22:2]  ³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[22:2]  ⁴ sn Take your son…Isaac. The instructions are very clear, but the details are deliberate. With every additional description the commandment becomes more challenging.

[22:2]  ⁵ sn There has been much debate over the location of Moriah; 2 Chr 3:1 suggests it may be the site where the temple was later built in Jerusalem.

[22:2]  ⁶ sn A whole burnt offering signified the complete surrender of the worshiper and complete acceptance by God. The demand for a human sacrifice was certainly radical and may have seemed to Abraham out of character for God. Abraham would have to obey without fully understanding what God was about.

[22:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “which I will say to.”

[22:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “Abraham rose up early in the morning and saddled his donkey.”

[22:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “he arose and he went.”

[22:9]  ⁷ sn Abraham built an altar there. The theme of Abraham’s altar building culminates here. He has been a faithful worshiper. Will he continue to worship when called upon to make such a radical sacrifice?

[22:9]  ⁸ sn Then he tied up. This text has given rise to an important theme in Judaism known as the Aqedah, from the Hebrew word for “binding.” When sacrifices were made in the sanctuary, God remembered the binding of Isaac, for which a substitute was offered. See D. Polish, “The Binding of Isaac,” Jud 6 (1957): 17-21.

[26:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[26:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and it happened when the days were long to him there.”

[26:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “look, Isaac.” By the use of the particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “look”), the narrator invites the audience to view the scene through Abimelech’s eyes.

[26:8]  ¹² tn Or “fondling.”

[26:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Surely, look!” See N. H. Snaith, “The meaning of Hebrew ‘ak,” VT 14 (1964): 221-25.

[26:9]  ¹² 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).

[26:18]  ¹³ tn Heb “he returned and dug,” meaning “he dug again” or “he reopened.”

[26:18]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “that they dug.” Since the subject is indefinite, the verb is translated as passive.

[26:18]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and the Philistines had stopped them up.” This clause explains why Isaac had to reopen them.

[26:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[26:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “them”; the referent (the wells) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[26:18]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “called names to them according to the names that his father called them.”

[27:33]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and Isaac trembled with a great trembling to excess.” The verb “trembled” is joined with a cognate accusative, which is modified by an adjective “great,” and a prepositional phrase “to excess.” All of this is emphatic, showing the violence of Isaac’s reaction to the news.

[27:33]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Who then is he who hunted game and brought [it] to me so that I ate from all before you arrived and blessed him?”

[27:46]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “loathe my life.” The Hebrew verb translated “loathe” refers to strong disgust (see Lev 20:23).

[27:46]  ¹⁸ tn Some translate the Hebrew term “Heth” as “Hittites” here (see also Gen 23:3), but this gives the impression that these people were the classical Hittites of Anatolia. However, there is no known connection between these sons of Heth, apparently a Canaanite group (see Gen 10:15), and the Hittites of Asia Minor. See H. A. Hoffner, Jr., “Hittites,” Peoples of the Old Testament World, 152-53.

[27:46]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “If Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, why to me life?”

[28:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “to take for himself from there a wife.”

[28:6]  ²⁰ tn The infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffix form a temporal clause.

[28:6]  ²¹ tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”

[28:13]  ²¹ tn Heb “the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.” The Hebrew word for “father” can typically be used in a broader sense than the English word, in this case referring to Abraham (who was Jacob’s grandfather). For stylistic reasons and for clarity, the words “your father” are supplied with “Isaac” in the translation.

[28:13]  ²² tn The Hebrew term אֶרֶץ (’erets) can mean “[the] earth,” “land,” “region,” “piece of ground,” or “ground” depending on the context. Here the term specifically refers to the plot of ground on which Jacob was lying, but at the same time this stands by metonymy for the entire land of Canaan.

[31:18]  ²³ tn Heb “drove,” but this is subject to misunderstanding in contemporary English.

[31:18]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and he led away all his cattle and all his moveable property which he acquired, the cattle he obtained, which he acquired in Paddan Aram to go to Isaac his father to the land of Canaan.”

[31:42]  ²⁵ tn Heb “the fear of Isaac,” that is, the one whom Isaac feared and respected. For further discussion of this title see M. Malul, “More on pahad yitschaq (Gen. 31:42,53) and the Oath by the Thigh,” VT 35 (1985): 192-200.

[31:42]  ²⁶ tn Heb “My oppression and the work of my hands God saw.”