3:1 Now 3 the serpent 4 was more shrewd 5
than any of the wild animals 6 that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Is it really true that 7 God 8 said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?” 9
3:14 The Lord God said to the serpent, 10
“Because you have done this,
cursed 11 are you above all the wild beasts
and all the living creatures of the field!
On your belly you will crawl 12
and dust you will eat 13 all the days of your life.
8:13 In Noah’s six hundred and first year, 14 in the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that 15 the surface of the ground was dry.
30:14 At the time 35 of the wheat harvest Reuben went out and found some mandrake plants 36 in a field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”
31:33 So Laban entered Jacob’s tent, and Leah’s tent, and the tent of the two female servants, but he did not find the idols. 37 Then he left Leah’s tent and entered Rachel’s. 38
47:1 Joseph went and told Pharaoh, “My father, my brothers, their flocks and herds, and all that they own have arrived from the land of
Canaan. They are now 48 in the land of Goshen.”
1 tn Or “fashioned.” To harmonize the order of events with the chronology of chapter one, some translate the prefixed verb form with vav (ו) consecutive as a past perfect (“had formed,” cf. NIV) here. (In chapter one the creation of the animals preceded the creation of man; here the animals are created after the man.) However, it is unlikely that the Hebrew construction can be translated in this way in the middle of this pericope, for the criteria for unmarked temporal overlay are not present here. See S. R. Driver, A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew, 84-88, and especially R. Buth, “Methodological Collision between Source Criticism and Discourse Analysis,” Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics, 138-54. For a contrary viewpoint see IBHS 552-53 §33.2.3 and C. J. Collins, “The Wayyiqtol as ‘Pluperfect’: When and Why,” TynBul 46 (1995): 117-40.
2 tn The imperfect verb form is future from the perspective of the past time narrative.
3 tn The chapter begins with a disjunctive clause (conjunction + subject + predicate) that introduces a new character and a new scene in the story.
4 sn Many theologians identify or associate the serpent with Satan. In this view Satan comes in the disguise of a serpent or speaks through a serpent. This explains the serpent’s capacity to speak. While later passages in the Bible may indicate there was a satanic presence behind the serpent (see, for example, Rev 12:9), the immediate context pictures the serpent as simply one of the animals of the field created by God (see vv. 1, 14). An ancient Jewish interpretation explains the reference to the serpent in a literal manner, attributing the capacity to speak to all the animals in the orchard. This text (Jub. 3:28) states, “On that day [the day the man and woman were expelled from the orchard] the mouth of all the beasts and cattle and birds and whatever walked or moved was stopped from speaking because all of them used to speak to one another with one speech and one language [presumed to be Hebrew, see 12:26].” Josephus, Ant. 1.1.4 (1.41) attributes the serpent’s actions to jealousy. He writes that “the serpent, living in the company of Adam and his wife, grew jealous of the blessings which he supposed were destined for them if they obeyed God’s behests, and, believing that disobedience would bring trouble on them, he maliciously persuaded the woman to taste of the tree of wisdom.”
5 tn The Hebrew word עָרוּם (’arum) basically means “clever.” This idea then polarizes into the nuances “cunning” (in a negative sense, see Job 5:12; 15:5), and “prudent” in a positive sense (Prov 12:16, 23; 13:16; 14:8, 15, 18; 22:3; 27:12). This same polarization of meaning can be detected in related words derived from the same root (see Exod 21:14; Josh 9:4; 1 Sam 23:22; Job 5:13; Ps 83:3). The negative nuance obviously applies in Gen 3, where the snake attempts to talk the woman into disobeying God by using half-truths and lies.
sn There is a wordplay in Hebrew between the words “naked” (עֲרוּמִּים, ’arummim) in 2:25 and “shrewd” (עָרוּם, ’arum) in 3:1. The point seems to be that the integrity of the man and the woman is the focus of the serpent’s craftiness. At the beginning they are naked and he is shrewd; afterward, they will be covered and he will be cursed.
6 tn Heb “animals of the field.”
7 tn Heb “Indeed that God said.” The beginning of the quotation is elliptical and therefore difficult to translate. One must supply a phrase like “is it true”: “Indeed, [is it true] that God said.”
8 sn God. The serpent does not use the expression “Yahweh God” [
9 tn Heb “you must not eat from all the tree[s] of the orchard.” After the negated prohibitive verb, מִכֹּל (mikkol, “from all”) has the meaning “from any.” Note the construction in Lev 18:26, where the statement “you must not do from all these abominable things” means “you must not do any of these abominable things.” See Lev 22:25 and Deut 28:14 as well.
10 sn Note that God asks no question of the serpent, does not call for confession, as he did to the man and the woman; there is only the announcement of the curse. The order in this section is chiastic: The man is questioned, the woman is questioned, the serpent is cursed, sentence is passed on the woman, sentence is passed on the man.
11 tn The Hebrew word translated “cursed,” a passive participle from אָרָר (’arar), either means “punished” or “banished,” depending on how one interprets the following preposition. If the preposition is taken as comparative, then the idea is “cursed [i.e., punished] are you above [i.e., more than] all the wild beasts.” In this case the comparative preposition reflects the earlier comparison: The serpent was more shrewd than all others, and so more cursed than all others. If the preposition is taken as separative (see the note on the word “ground” in 4:11), then the idea is “cursed and banished from all the wild beasts.” In this case the serpent is condemned to isolation from all the other animals.
12 tn Heb “go”; “walk,” but in English “crawl” or “slither” better describes a serpent’s movement.
13 sn Dust you will eat. Being restricted to crawling on the ground would necessarily involve “eating dust,” although that is not the diet of the serpent. The idea of being brought low, of “eating dust” as it were, is a symbol of humiliation.
14 tn Heb In the six hundred and first year.” Since this refers to the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, the word “Noah’s” has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Heb “and saw and look.” As in v. 11, the deictic particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) invites readers to enter into the story, as it were, and look at the dry ground with their own eyes.
16 tn The
17 tn Heb “and the
18 tn Heb “in his heart.”
19 tn Here the Hebrew word translated “curse” is קָלָל (qalal), used in the Piel verbal stem.
20 tn The Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) can be used in a concessive sense (see BDB 473 s.v. כִּי), which makes good sense in this context. Its normal causal sense (“for”) does not fit the context here very well.
21 tn Heb “the inclination of the heart of humankind.”
22 tn Heb “from his youth.”
23 tn Heb “a man to his neighbor.” The Hebrew idiom may be translated “to each other” or “one to another.”
24 tn The speech contains two cohortatives of exhortation followed by their respective cognate accusatives: “let us brick bricks” (נִלְבְּנָה לְבֵנִים, nilbbÿnah lÿvenim) and “burn for burning” (נִשְׂרְפָה לִשְׂרֵפָה, nisrÿfah lisrefah). This stresses the intensity of the undertaking; it also reflects the Akkadian text which uses similar constructions (see E. A. Speiser, Genesis [AB], 75-76).
25 tn Or “bitumen” (cf. NEB, NRSV).
26 tn The disjunctive clause gives information parenthetical to the narrative.
27 tn Heb “he returned and dug,” meaning “he dug again” or “he reopened.”
28 tn Heb “that they dug.” Since the subject is indefinite, the verb is translated as passive.
29 tn Heb “and the Philistines had stopped them up.” This clause explains why Isaac had to reopen them.
30 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
31 tn Heb “them”; the referent (the wells) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
32 tn Heb “called names to them according to the names that his father called them.”
33 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.
34 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?”
35 tn Heb “during the days.”
36 sn Mandrake plants were popularly believed to be an aphrodisiac in the culture of the time.
37 tn No direct object is specified for the verb “find” in the Hebrew text. The words “the idols” have been supplied in the translation for clarification.
38 tn Heb “and he went out from the tent of Leah and went into the tent of Rachel.”
39 tn The verb has no expressed subject, and so it could be treated as a passive (“a Hebrew man was brought in”; cf. NIV). But it is clear from the context that her husband brought Joseph into the household, so Potiphar is the apparent referent here. Thus the translation supplies “my husband” as the referent of the unspecified pronominal subject of the verb (cf. NEB, NRSV).
40 sn A Hebrew man. Potiphar’s wife raises the ethnic issue when talking to her servants about what their boss had done.
41 tn Heb “to make fun of us.” The verb translated “to humiliate us” here means to hold something up for ridicule, or to toy with something harmfully. Attempted rape would be such an activity, for it would hold the victim in contempt.
42 tn Heb “he came to me to lie with me.” Here the expression “lie with” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
43 tn Heb “and I cried out with a loud voice.”
44 sn The meaning of Joseph’s Egyptian name, Zaphenath-Paneah, is uncertain. Many recent commentators have followed the proposal of G. Steindorff that it means “the god has said, ‘he will live’” (“Der Name Josephs Saphenat-Pa‘neach,” ZÄS 31 [1889]: 41-42); others have suggested “the god speaks and lives” (see BDB 861 s.v. צָפְנָת פַּעְנֵחַ); “the man he knows” (J. Vergote, Joseph en Égypte, 145); or “Joseph [who is called] áIp-àankh” (K. A. Kitchen, NBD3 1262).
45 sn The name Asenath may mean “she belongs to the goddess Neit” (see HALOT 74 s.v. אָֽסְנַת). A novel was written at the beginning of the first century entitled Joseph and Asenath, which included a legendary account of the conversion of Asenath to Joseph’s faith in Yahweh. However, all that can be determined from this chapter is that their children received Hebrew names. See also V. Aptowitzer, “Asenath, the Wife of Joseph – a Haggadic Literary-Historical Study,” HUCA 1 (1924): 239-306.
46 sn On (also in v. 50) is another name for the city of Heliopolis.
47 tn Heb “and he passed through.”
48 tn Heb “Look they [are] in the land of Goshen.” Joseph draws attention to the fact of their presence in Goshen.