Genesis 47:23

47:23 Joseph said to the people, “Since I have bought you and your land today for Pharaoh, here is seed for you. Cultivate ¹  the land.

Exodus 34:21

34:21 “On six days ²  you may labor, but on the seventh day you must rest; ³  even at the time of plowing and of harvest ⁴  you are to rest. ⁵ 

Deuteronomy 21:4

21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, ⁶  to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. ⁷  There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck.

Deuteronomy 21:1

Laws Concerning Unsolved Murder

21:1 If a homicide victim ⁸  should be found lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you, ⁹  and no one knows who killed ¹⁰  him,

Deuteronomy 8:12

8:12 When you eat your fill, when you build and occupy good houses,

Isaiah 30:24

30:24 The oxen and donkeys used in plowing ¹¹ 

will eat seasoned feed winnowed with a shovel and pitchfork. ¹² 

[47:23]  ¹ tn The perfect verbal form with the vav consecutive is equivalent to a command here.

[34:21]  ² tn This is an adverbial accusative of time.

[34:21]  ³ tn Or “cease” (i.e., from the labors).

[34:21]  ⁴ sn See M. Dahood, “Vocative lamed in Exodus 2,4 and Merismus in 34,21,” Bib 62 (1981): 413-15.

[34:21]  ⁵ tn The imperfect tense expresses injunction or instruction.

[21:4]  ⁶ tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.

[21:4]  ⁷ sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.

[21:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “slain [one].” The term חָלָל (khalal) suggests something other than a natural death (cf. Num 19:16; 23:24; Jer 51:52; Ezek 26:15; 30:24; 31:17-18).

[21:1]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it,” but this has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[21:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “struck,” but in context a fatal blow is meant; cf. NLT “who committed the murder.”

[30:24]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground.”

[30:24]  ¹² sn Crops will be so abundant that even the work animals will eat well.