Genesis 28:3-4

28:3 May the sovereign God ¹  bless you! May he make you fruitful and give you a multitude of descendants! ²  Then you will become ³  a large nation. ⁴  28:4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing he gave to Abraham ⁵  so that you may possess the land ⁶  God gave to Abraham, the land where you have been living as a temporary resident.” ⁷ 

Genesis 27:4

27:4 Then prepare for me some tasty food, the kind I love, and bring it to me. Then ⁸  I will eat it so that I may bless you ⁹  before I die.”

Genesis 27:27-33

27:27 So Jacob ¹⁰  went over and kissed him. When Isaac caught the scent ¹¹  of his clothing, he blessed him, saying,

“Yes, ¹²  my son smells

like the scent of an open field

which the Lord has blessed.

27:28 May God give you

the dew of the sky ¹³ 

and the richness ¹⁴  of the earth,

and plenty of grain and new wine.

27:29 May peoples serve you

and nations bow down to you.

You will be ¹⁵  lord ¹⁶  over your brothers,

and the sons of your mother will bow down to you. ¹⁷ 

May those who curse you be cursed,

and those who bless you be blessed.”

27:30 Isaac had just finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely left ¹⁸  his father’s ¹⁹  presence, when his brother Esau returned from the hunt. ²⁰  27:31 He also prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father. Esau ²¹  said to him, “My father, get up ²²  and eat some of your son’s wild game. Then you can bless me.” ²³  27:32 His father Isaac asked, ²⁴  “Who are you?” “I am your firstborn son,” ²⁵  he replied, “Esau!” 27:33 Isaac began to shake violently ²⁶  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. ²⁷  He will indeed be blessed!”

Genesis 48:15

48:15 Then he blessed Joseph and said,

“May the God before whom my fathers

Abraham and Isaac walked –

the God who has been my shepherd ²⁸ 

all my life long to this day,

Genesis 49:28

49:28 These ²⁹  are the twelve tribes of Israel. This is what their father said to them when he blessed them. He gave each of them an appropriate blessing. ³⁰ 

Deuteronomy 33:1

Introduction to the Blessing of Moses

33:1 This is the blessing Moses the man of God pronounced upon the Israelites before his death.

Joshua 22:7

22:7 (Now to one half-tribe of Manasseh, Moses had assigned land in Bashan; and to the other half Joshua had assigned land on the west side of the Jordan with their fellow Israelites.) When Joshua sent them home, ³¹  he rewarded ³²  them,

[28:3]  ¹ tn Heb “El Shaddai.” See the extended note on the phrase “sovereign God” in Gen 17:1.

[28:3]  ² tn Heb “and make you fruitful and multiply you.” See Gen 17:6, 20 for similar terminology.

[28:3]  ³ tn The perfect verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here indicates consequence. The collocation הָיָה + preposition לְ (hayah + lÿ) means “become.”

[28:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “an assembly of peoples.”

[28:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “and may he give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you.” The name “Abraham” is an objective genitive here; this refers to the blessing that God gave to Abraham.

[28:4]  ⁶ tn The words “the land” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[28:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “the land of your sojournings,” that is, the land where Jacob had been living as a resident alien, as his future descendants would after him.

[27:4]  ⁸ tn Following the imperative, the cohortative (with the prefixed conjunction) indicates purpose or result.

[27:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “so that my soul may bless you.” The use of נַפְשִׁי (nafshi, “my soul”) as the subject emphasizes that the blessing will be made with all Isaac’s desire and vitality. The conjunction “so that” closely relates the meal to the blessing, suggesting that this will be a ritual meal in conjunction with the giving of a formal blessing.

[27:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[27:27]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and he smelled the smell”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[27:27]  ¹² tn Heb “see.”

[27:28]  ¹³ tn Heb “and from the dew of the sky.”

[27:28]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and from the fatness.”

[27:29]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and be.” The verb is an imperative, which is used rhetorically in this oracle of blessing. It is an invitation to exercise authority his brothers and indicates that he is granted such authority by the patriarch of the family. Furthermore, the blessing enables the recipient to accomplish this.

[27:29]  ¹⁶ tn The Hebrew word is גְבִיר (gevir, “lord, mighty one”). The one being blessed will be stronger and therefore more powerful than his brother. See Gen 25:23. The feminine form of this rare noun means “mistress” or “queen-mother.”

[27:29]  ¹⁷ tn Following the imperative, the prefixed verbal form (which is either an imperfect or a jussive) with the prefixed conjunction indicates purpose or result.

[27:30]  ¹⁸ tn The use of the infinitive absolute before the finite form of the verb makes the construction emphatic.

[27:30]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the presence of Isaac his father.” The repetition of the proper name (“Isaac”) was

[27:30]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and Esau his brother came from his hunt.”

[27:31]  ²¹ tn Heb “and he said to his father”; the referent of “he” (Esau) has been specified in the translation for clarity, while the words “his father” have been replaced by the pronoun “him” for stylistic reasons.

[27:31]  ²² tn Or “arise” (i.e., sit up).

[27:31]  ²³ tn Heb “so that your soul may bless me.”

[27:32]  ²⁴ tn Heb “said.”

[27:32]  ²⁵ tn Heb “and he said, ‘I [am] your son, your firstborn.’” The order of the introductory clause and the direct discourse has been rearranged for stylistic reasons.

[27:33]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ 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?”

[48:15]  ²⁸ tn Heb “shepherded me.” The verb has been translated as an English noun for stylistic reasons.

[49:28]  ²⁹ tn Heb “All these.”

[49:28]  ³⁰ tn Heb “and he blessed them, each of whom according to his blessing, he blessed them.”

[22:7]  ³¹ tn Heb “to their tents.”

[22:7]  ³² tn Heb “blessed.”