Genesis 49:25

49:25 because of the God of your father,

who will help you, ¹ 

because of the sovereign God, ² 

who will bless you ³ 

with blessings from the sky above,

blessings from the deep that lies below,

and blessings of the breasts and womb. ⁴ 

Genesis 27:35

27:35 But Isaac ⁵  replied, “Your brother came in here deceitfully and took away ⁶  your blessing.”

Genesis 49:26

49:26 The blessings of your father are greater

than ⁷  the blessings of the eternal mountains ⁸ 

or the desirable things of the age-old hills.

They will be on the head of Joseph

and on the brow of the prince of his brothers. ⁹ 

Genesis 12:2

12:2 Then I will make you ¹⁰  into a great nation, and I will bless you, ¹¹ 

and I will make your name great, ¹² 

so that you will exemplify divine blessing. ¹³ 

Genesis 27:12

27:12 My father may touch me! Then he’ll think I’m mocking him ¹⁴  and I’ll bring a curse on myself instead of a blessing.”

Genesis 27:36

27:36 Esau exclaimed, “‘Jacob’ is the right name for him! ¹⁵  He has tripped me up ¹⁶  two times! He took away my birthright, and now, look, he has taken away my blessing!” Then he asked, “Have you not kept back a blessing for me?”

Genesis 27:38

27:38 Esau said to his father, “Do you have only that one blessing, my father? Bless me too!” ¹⁷  Then Esau wept loudly. ¹⁸ 

Genesis 28:4

28:4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing he gave to Abraham ¹⁹  so that you may possess the land ²⁰  God gave to Abraham, the land where you have been living as a temporary resident.” ²¹ 

Genesis 33:11

33:11 Please take my present ²²  that was brought to you, for God has been generous ²³  to me and I have all I need.” ²⁴  When Jacob urged him, he took it. ²⁵ 

Genesis 49:28

49:28 These ²⁶  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. ²⁷ 

Genesis 27:41

27:41 So Esau hated ²⁸  Jacob because of the blessing his father had given to his brother. ²⁹  Esau said privately, ³⁰  “The time ³¹  of mourning for my father is near; then I will kill ³²  my brother Jacob!”

Genesis 39:5

39:5 From the time ³³  Potiphar ³⁴  appointed him over his household and over all that he owned, the Lord blessed ³⁵  the Egyptian’s household for Joseph’s sake. The blessing of the Lord was on everything that he had, both ³⁶  in his house and in his fields. ³⁷ 

[49:25]  ¹ tn Heb “and he will help you.”

[49:25]  ² tn Heb “Shaddai.” See the note on the title “sovereign God” in Gen 17:1. The preposition אֵת (’et) in the Hebrew text should probably be emended to אֵל (’el, “God”).

[49:25]  ³ tn Heb “and he will bless you.”

[49:25]  ⁴ sn Jacob envisions God imparting both agricultural (blessings from the sky above, blessings from the deep that lies below) and human fertility (blessings of the breasts and womb) to Joseph and his family.

[27:35]  ⁵ tn Heb “and he said”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[27:35]  ⁶ tn Or “took”; “received.”

[49:26]  ⁹ tn Heb “have prevailed over.”

[49:26]  ¹⁰ tn One could interpret the phrase הוֹרַי (horay) to mean “my progenitors” (literally, “the ones who conceived me”), but the masculine form argues against this. It is better to emend the text to הַרֲרֵי (harare, “mountains of”) because it forms a better parallel with the next clause. In this case the final yod (י) on the form is a construct plural marker, not a pronominal suffix.

[49:26]  ¹¹ tn For further discussion of this passage, see I. Sonne, “Genesis 49:24-26,” JBL 65 (1946): 303-6.

[12:2]  ¹³ tn The three first person verbs in v. 2a should be classified as cohortatives. The first two have pronominal suffixes, so the form itself does not indicate a cohortative. The third verb form is clearly cohortative.

[12:2]  ¹⁴ sn I will bless you. The blessing of creation is now carried forward to the patriarch. In the garden God blessed Adam and Eve; in that blessing he gave them (1) a fruitful place, (2) endowed them with fertility to multiply, and (3) made them rulers over creation. That was all ruined at the fall. Now God begins to build his covenant people; in Gen 12-22 he promises to give Abram (1) a land flowing with milk and honey, (2) a great nation without number, and (3) kingship.

[12:2]  ¹⁵ tn Or “I will make you famous.”

[12:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and be a blessing.” The verb form הְיֵה (hÿyeh) is the Qal imperative of the verb הָיָה (hayah). The vav (ו) with the imperative after the cohortatives indicates purpose or consequence. What does it mean for Abram to “be a blessing”? Will he be a channel or source of blessing for others, or a prime example of divine blessing? A similar statement occurs in Zech 8:13, where God assures his people, “You will be a blessing,” in contrast to the past when they “were a curse.” Certainly “curse” here does not refer to Israel being a source of a curse, but rather to the fact that they became a curse-word or byword among the nations, who regarded them as the epitome of an accursed people (see 2 Kgs 22:19; Jer 42:18; 44:8, 12, 22). Therefore the statement “be a blessing” seems to refer to Israel being transformed into a prime example of a blessed people, whose name will be used in blessing formulae, rather than in curses. If the statement “be a blessing” is understood in the same way in Gen 12:2, then it means that God would so bless Abram that other nations would hear of his fame and hold him up as a paradigm of divine blessing in their blessing formulae.

[27:12]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Perhaps my father will feel me and I will be in his eyes like a mocker.” The Hebrew expression “I will be in his eyes like” means “I would appear to him as.”

[27:36]  ²¹ tn Heb “Is he not rightly named Jacob?” The rhetorical question, since it expects a positive reply, has been translated as a declarative statement.

[27:36]  ²² sn He has tripped me up. When originally given, the name Jacob was a play on the word “heel” (see Gen 25:26). The name (since it is a verb) probably means something like “may he protect,” that is, as a rearguard, dogging the heels. This name was probably chosen because of the immediate association with the incident of grabbing the heel. Esau gives the name “Jacob” a negative connotation here, the meaning “to trip up; to supplant.”

[27:38]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Bless me, me also, my father.” The words “my father” have not been repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[27:38]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and Esau lifted his voice and wept.”

[28:4]  ²⁹ 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]  ³⁰ tn The words “the land” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[28:4]  ³¹ 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.

[33:11]  ³³ tn Heb “blessing.” It is as if Jacob is trying to repay what he stole from his brother twenty years earlier.

[33:11]  ³⁴ tn Or “gracious,” but in the specific sense of prosperity.

[33:11]  ³⁵ tn Heb “all.”

[33:11]  ³⁶ tn Heb “and he urged him and he took.” The referent of the first pronoun in the sequence (“he”) has been specified as “Jacob” in the translation for clarity.

[49:28]  ³⁷ tn Heb “All these.”

[49:28]  ³⁸ tn Heb “and he blessed them, each of whom according to his blessing, he blessed them.”

[27:41]  ⁴¹ tn Or “bore a grudge against” (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV). The Hebrew verb שָׂטַם (satam) describes persistent hatred.

[27:41]  ⁴² tn Heb “because of the blessing which his father blessed him.”

[27:41]  ⁴³ tn Heb “said in his heart.” The expression may mean “said to himself.” Even if this is the case, v. 42 makes it clear that he must have shared his intentions with someone, because the news reached Rebekah.

[27:41]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “days.”

[27:41]  ⁴⁵ tn The cohortative here expresses Esau’s determined resolve to kill Jacob.

[39:5]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “and it was from then.”

[39:5]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Potiphar) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[39:5]  ⁴⁷ sn The Hebrew word translated blessed carries the idea of enrichment, prosperity, success. It is the way believers describe success at the hand of God. The text illustrates the promise made to Abraham that whoever blesses his descendants will be blessed (Gen 12:1-3).

[39:5]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “in the house and in the field.” The word “both” has been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[39:5]  ⁴⁹ sn The passage gives us a good picture of Joseph as a young man who was responsible and faithful, both to his master and to his God. This happened within a very short time of his being sold into Egypt. It undermines the view that Joseph was a liar, a tattletale, and an arrogant adolescent.