Kejadian 31:41

31:41 This was my lot ¹  for twenty years in your house: I worked like a slave ²  for you – fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, but you changed my wages ten times!

Kejadian 34:12

34:12 You can make the bride price and the gift I must bring very expensive, ³  and I’ll give ⁴  whatever you ask ⁵  of me. Just give me the young woman as my wife!”

Keluaran 22:16-17

Moral and Ceremonial Laws

22:16 ⁶ “If a man seduces a virgin ⁷  who is not engaged ⁸  and has sexual relations with her, he must surely endow ⁹  her to be his wife. 22:17 If her father refuses to give her to him, he must pay money for the bride price of virgins.

Keluaran 22:2

22:2 “If a thief is caught ¹⁰  breaking in ¹¹  and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guilt for him. ¹² 

1 Samuel 3:14

3:14 Therefore I swore an oath to the house of Eli, ‘The sin of the house of Eli can never be forgiven by sacrifice or by grain offering.’”

Hosea 3:2

3:2 So I paid fifteen shekels of silver and about seven bushels of barley ¹³  to purchase her.

Hosea 12:12

Jacob in Aram, Israel in Egypt, and Ephraim in Trouble

12:12 Jacob fled to the country of Aram,

then Israel worked ¹⁴  to acquire a wife;

he tended sheep to pay for her.

[31:41]  ¹ tn Heb “this to me.”

[31:41]  ² tn Heb “served you,” but in this accusatory context the meaning is more “worked like a slave.”

[34:12]  ³ tn Heb “Make very great upon me the bride price and gift.” The imperatives are used in a rhetorical manner. Shechem’s point is that he will pay the price, no matter how expensive it might be.

[34:12]  ⁴ tn The cohortative expresses Shechem’s resolve to have Dinah as his wife.

[34:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “say.”

[22:16]  ⁶ sn The second half of the chapter records various laws of purity and justice. Any of them could be treated in an expository way, but in the present array they offer a survey of God’s righteous standards: Maintain the sanctity of marriage (16-17); maintain the purity of religious institutions (18-20), maintain the rights of human beings (21-28), maintain the rights of Yahweh (29-31).

[22:16]  ⁷ tn This is the word בְּתוּלָה (bÿtulah); it describes a young woman who is not married or a young woman engaged to be married; in any case, she is presumed to be a virgin.

[22:16]  ⁸ tn Or “pledged” for marriage.

[22:16]  ⁹ tn The verb מָהַר (mahar) means “pay the marriage price,” and the related noun is the bride price. B. Jacob says this was a proposal gift and not a purchase price (Exodus, 700). This is the price paid to her parents, which allowed for provision should there be a divorce. The amount was usually agreed on by the two families, but the price was higher for a pure bride from a noble family. Here, the one who seduces her must pay it, regardless of whether he marries her or not.

[22:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “found” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).

[22:2]  ¹¹ tn The word בַּמַּחְתֶּרֶת (bammakhteret) means “digging through” the walls of a house (usually made of mud bricks). The verb is used only a few times and has the meaning of dig in (as into houses) or row hard (as in Jonah 1:13).

[22:2]  ¹² tn The text has “there is not to him bloods.” When the word “blood” is put in the plural, it refers to bloodshed, or the price of blood that is shed, i.e., blood guiltiness.

[22:2]  sn This law focuses on what is reasonable defense against burglary. If someone killed a thief who was breaking in during the night, he was not charged because he would not have known it was just a thief, but if it happened during the day, he was guilty of a crime, on the assumption that in daylight the thief posed no threat to the homeowner’s life and could be stopped and made to pay restitution.

[3:2]  ¹³ tc The LXX reads “a homer of barley and a measure of wine,” a reading followed by some English translations (e.g., NRSV, NLT).

[3:2]  tn Heb “a homer of barley and a lethech of barley.” A homer was about 5 bushels (180 liters) and a lethech about 2.5 bushels (90 liters).

[12:12]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “served” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “earned a wife.”