47:11 So Joseph settled his father and his brothers. He gave them territory 16 in the land of Egypt, in the best region of the land, the land of Rameses, 17 just as Pharaoh had commanded.
1 tn Heb “and fear of you and dread of you will be upon every living creature of the earth and upon every bird of the sky.” The suffixes on the nouns “fear” and “dread” are objective genitives. The animals will fear humans from this time forward.
2 tn Heb “into your hand are given.” The “hand” signifies power. To say the animals have been given into the hands of humans means humans have been given authority over them.
3 tn Heb “drew near to enter.”
4 tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “look”) is deictic here; it draws attention to the following fact.
5 tn Heb “a woman beautiful of appearance are you.”
6 tn This is the same Hebrew word translated “ground” in the preceding verse.
7 tn The verb is singular in the Hebrew; Jacob is addressed as the representative of his descendants.
8 tn Theoretically the Niphal stem can be translated either as passive or reflexive/reciprocal. (The Niphal of “bless” is only used in formulations of the Abrahamic covenant. See Gen 12:2; 18:18; 28:14.) Traditionally the verb is taken as passive here, as if Jacob were going to be a channel or source of blessing. But in other formulations of the Abrahamic covenant (see Gen 22:18; 26:4) the Hitpael replaces this Niphal form, suggesting a translation “will bless (i.e., pronounce blessings upon) themselves/one another.” The Hitpael of “bless” is used with a reflexive/reciprocal sense in Deut 29:18; Ps 72:17; Isa 65:16; Jer 4:2. Gen 28:14 predicts that Jacob will be held up as a paradigm of divine blessing and that people will use his name in their blessing formulae (see Gen 12:2 and 18:18 as well, where Abram/Abraham receives this promise). For examples of blessing formulae utilizing an individual as an example of blessing see Gen 48:20 and Ruth 4:11.
9 tn Heb “and they will pronounce blessings by you, all the families of the earth, and by your offspring.”
10 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Esau) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
11 tn Heb “lifted up his eyes.”
12 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
13 tn The Hebrew verb means “to be gracious; to show favor”; here it carries the nuance “to give graciously.”
14 tn Heb “And look, seven other cows were coming up after them from the Nile, bad of appearance and thin of flesh.”
15 tn Heb “the Nile.” This has been replaced by “the river” in the translation for stylistic reasons.
16 tn Heb “a possession,” or “a holding.” Joseph gave them a plot of land with rights of ownership in the land of Goshen.
17 sn The land of Rameses is another designation for the region of Goshen. It is named Rameses because of a city in that region (Exod 1:11; 12:37). The use of this name may represent a modernization of the text for the understanding of the intended readers, substituting a later name for an earlier one. Alternatively, there may have been an earlier Rameses for which the region was named.