35:1 Then God said to Jacob, “Go up at once 6 to Bethel 7 and live there. Make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” 8
4:21 She named the boy Ichabod, 10 saying, “The glory has departed from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband. 4:22 She said, “The glory has departed from Israel, because the ark of God has been captured.”
13:4 But you, however, are inventors of lies; 11
all of you are worthless physicians! 12
21:34 So how can you console me with your futile words?
Nothing is left of your answers but deception!” 13
1 tn The construction uses a Hiphil infinitive, which E. A. Speiser classifies as an elative Hiphil. The contrast is with the previous Piel: there “she had hard labor,” and here, “her labor was at its hardest.” Failure to see this, Speiser notes, has led to redundant translations and misunderstandings (Genesis [AB], 273).
2 sn Another son. The episode recalls and fulfills the prayer of Rachel at the birth of Joseph (Gen 30:24): “may he add” another son.
3 tn Heb “in the going out of her life, for she was dying.” Rachel named the child with her dying breath.
4 sn The name Ben-Oni means “son of my suffering.” It is ironic that Rachel’s words to Jacob in Gen 30:1, “Give me children or I’ll die,” take a different turn here, for it was having the child that brought about her death.
5 tn The disjunctive clause is contrastive.
sn His father called him Benjamin. There was a preference for giving children good or positive names in the ancient world, and “son of my suffering” would not do (see the incident in 1 Chr 4:9-10), because it would be a reminder of the death of Rachel (in this connection, see also D. Daube, “The Night of Death,” HTR 61 [1968]: 629-32). So Jacob named him Benjamin, which means “son of the [or “my”] right hand.” The name Benjamin appears in the Mari texts. There have been attempts to connect this name to the resident tribe listed at Mari, “sons of the south” (since the term “right hand” can also mean “south” in Hebrew), but this assumes a different reading of the story. See J. Muilenburg, “The Birth of Benjamin,” JBL 75 (1956): 194-201.
6 tn Heb “arise, go up.” The first imperative gives the command a sense of urgency.
7 map For location see Map4 G4; Map5 C1; Map6 E3; Map7 D1; Map8 G3.
8 sn God is calling on Jacob to fulfill his vow he made when he fled from…Esau (see Gen 28:20-22).
9 tn Heb “and she did not set her heart.”
10 sn The name Ichabod (אִי־כָבוֹד) may mean, “Where is the glory?”
11 tn The טֹפְלֵי־שָׁקֶר (tofÿle shaqer) are “plasterers of lies” (Ps 119:69). The verb means “to coat, smear, plaster.” The idea is that of imputing something that is not true. Job is saying that his friends are inventors of lies. The LXX was influenced by the next line and came up with “false physicians.”
12 tn The literal rendering of the construct would be “healers of worthlessness.” Ewald and Dillmann translated it “patchers” based on a meaning in Arabic and Ethiopic; this would give the idea “botchers.” But it makes equally good sense to take “healers” as the meaning, for Job’s friends came to minister comfort and restoration to him – but they failed. See P. Humbert, “Maladie et medicine dans l’AT,” RHPR 44 (1964): 1-29.
13 tn The word מָעַל (ma’al) is used for “treachery; deception; fraud.” Here Job is saying that their way of interpreting reality is dangerously unfaithful.