Genesis 8:14

8:14 And by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth ¹  was dry.

Genesis 2:13

2:13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it runs through ²  the entire land of Cush. ³ 

Genesis 38:30

38:30 Afterward his brother came out – the one who had the scarlet thread on his hand – and he was named Zerah. ⁴ 

Genesis 41:52

41:52 He named the second child Ephraim, ⁵  saying, ⁶  “Certainly ⁷  God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.”

Genesis 7:11

7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month – on that day all the fountains of the great deep ⁸  burst open and the floodgates of the heavens ⁹  were opened.

Genesis 32:19

32:19 He also gave these instructions to the second and third servants, as well as all those who were following the herds, saying, “You must say the same thing to Esau when you meet him. ¹⁰ 

[8:14]  ¹ tn In v. 13 the ground (הָאֲדָמָה, ha’adamah) is dry; now the earth (הָאָרֶץ, ha’arets) is dry.

[2:13]  ² tn Heb “it is that which goes around.”

[2:13]  ³ sn Cush. In the Bible the Hebrew word כּוּשׁ (kush, “Kush”) often refers to Ethiopia (so KJV, CEV), but here it must refer to a region in Mesopotamia, the area of the later Cassite dynasty of Babylon. See Gen 10:8 as well as E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB), 20.

[38:30]  ³ sn Perhaps the child was named Zerah because of the scarlet thread. Though the Hebrew word used for “scarlet thread” in v. 28 is not related to the name Zerah, there is a related root in Babylonian and western Aramaic that means “scarlet” or “scarlet thread.” In Hebrew the name appears to be derived from a root meaning “to shine.” The name could have originally meant something like “shining one” or “God has shined.” Zerah became the head of a tribe (Num 26:20) from whom Achan descended (Josh 7:1).

[41:52]  ⁴ sn The name Ephraim (אֶפְרַיִם, ’efrayim), a form of the Hebrew verb פָּרָה (parah), means “to bear fruit.” The theme of fruitfulness is connected with this line of the family from Rachel (30:2) on down (see Gen 49:22, Deut 33:13-17, and Hos 13:15). But there is some difficulty with the name “Ephraim” itself. It appears to be a dual, for which F. Delitzsch simply said it meant “double fruitfulness” (New Commentary on Genesis, 2:305). G. J. Spurrell suggested it was a diphthongal pronunciation of a name ending in -an or -am, often thought to be dual suffixes (Notes on the text of the book of Genesis, 334). Many, however, simply connect the name to the territory of Ephraim and interpret it to be “fertile land” (C. Fontinoy, “Les noms de lieux en -ayim dans la Bible,” UF 3 [1971]: 33-40). The dual would then be an old locative ending. There is no doubt that the name became attached to the land in which the tribe settled, and it is possible that is where the dual ending came from, but in this story it refers to Joseph’s God-given fruitfulness.

[41:52]  ⁵ tn The word “saying” has been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[41:52]  ⁶ tn Or “for.”

[7:11]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew term תְּהוֹם (tÿhom, “deep”) refers to the watery deep, the salty ocean – especially the primeval ocean that surrounds and underlies the earth (see Gen 1:2).

[7:11]  ⁶ sn On the prescientific view of the sky reflected here, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World (AnBib), 46.

[32:19]  ⁶ tn Heb “And he commanded also the second, also the third, also all the ones going after the herds, saying: ‘According to this word you will speak when you find him.’”