Kejadian 3:16

3:16 To the woman he said,

“I will greatly increase ¹  your labor pains; ² 

with pain you will give birth to children.

You will want to control your husband, ³ 

but he will dominate ⁴  you.”

Kejadian 11:29

11:29 And Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, ⁵  and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah; ⁶  she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

Kejadian 12:6

12:6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree ⁷  of Moreh ⁸  at Shechem. ⁹  (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) ¹⁰ 

Kejadian 13:7

13:7 So there were quarrels ¹¹  between Abram’s herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen. ¹²  (Now the Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the land at that time.) ¹³ 

Kejadian 14:10

14:10 Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits. ¹⁴  When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell into them, ¹⁵  but some survivors ¹⁶  fled to the hills. ¹⁷ 

Kejadian 19:16

19:16 When Lot ¹⁸  hesitated, the men grabbed his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters because the Lord had compassion on them. ¹⁹  They led them away and placed them ²⁰  outside the city.

Kejadian 21:7

21:7 She went on to say, ²¹  “Who would ²²  have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have given birth to a son for him in his old age!”

Kejadian 30:37

30:37 But Jacob took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond, and plane trees. He made white streaks by peeling them, making the white inner wood in the branches visible.

Kejadian 32:13

32:13 Jacob ²³  stayed there that night. Then he sent ²⁴  as a gift ²⁵  to his brother Esau

Kejadian 35:16

35:16 They traveled on from Bethel, and when Ephrath was still some distance away, ²⁶  Rachel went into labor ²⁷  – and her labor was hard.

Kejadian 45:19

45:19 You are also commanded to say, ²⁸  ‘Do this: Take for yourselves wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives. Bring your father and come.

[3:16]  ¹ tn The imperfect verb form is emphasized and intensified by the infinitive absolute from the same verb.

[3:16]  ² tn Heb “your pain and your conception,” suggesting to some interpreters that having a lot of children was a result of the judgment (probably to make up for the loss through death). But the next clause shows that the pain is associated with conception and childbirth. The two words form a hendiadys (where two words are joined to express one idea, like “good and angry” in English), the second explaining the first. “Conception,” if the correct meaning of the noun, must be figurative here since there is no pain in conception; it is a synecdoche, representing the entire process of childbirth and child rearing from the very start. However, recent etymological research suggests the noun is derived from a root הרר (hrr), not הרה (hrh), and means “trembling, pain” (see D. Tsumura, “A Note on הרוֹן (Gen 3,16),” Bib 75 [1994]: 398-400). In this case “pain and trembling” refers to the physical effects of childbirth. The word עִצְּבוֹן (’itsÿvon, “pain”), an abstract noun related to the verb (עָצַב, ’atsav), includes more than physical pain. It is emotional distress as well as physical pain. The same word is used in v. 17 for the man’s painful toil in the field.

[3:16]  ³ tn Heb “and toward your husband [will be] your desire.” The nominal sentence does not have a verb; a future verb must be supplied, because the focus of the oracle is on the future struggle. The precise meaning of the noun תְּשׁוּקָה (tÿshuqah, “desire”) is debated. Many interpreters conclude that it refers to sexual desire here, because the subject of the passage is the relationship between a wife and her husband, and because the word is used in a romantic sense in Song 7:11 HT (7:10 ET). However, this interpretation makes little sense in Gen 3:16. First, it does not fit well with the assertion “he will dominate you.” Second, it implies that sexual desire was not part of the original creation, even though the man and the woman were told to multiply. And third, it ignores the usage of the word in Gen 4:7 where it refers to sin’s desire to control and dominate Cain. (Even in Song of Songs it carries the basic idea of “control,” for it describes the young man’s desire to “have his way sexually” with the young woman.) In Gen 3:16 the Lord announces a struggle, a conflict between the man and the woman. She will desire to control him, but he will dominate her instead. This interpretation also fits the tone of the passage, which is a judgment oracle. See further Susan T. Foh, “What is the Woman’s Desire?” WTJ 37 (1975): 376-83.

[3:16]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew verb מָשַׁל (mashal) means “to rule over,” but in a way that emphasizes powerful control, domination, or mastery. This also is part of the baser human nature. The translation assumes the imperfect verb form has an objective/indicative sense here. Another option is to understand it as having a modal, desiderative nuance, “but he will want to dominate you.” In this case, the Lord simply announces the struggle without indicating who will emerge victorious.

[3:16]  sn This passage is a judgment oracle. It announces that conflict between man and woman will become the norm in human society. It does not depict the NT ideal, where the husband sacrificially loves his wife, as Christ loved the church, and where the wife recognizes the husband’s loving leadership in the family and voluntarily submits to it. Sin produces a conflict or power struggle between the man and the woman, but in Christ man and woman call a truce and live harmoniously (Eph 5:18-32).

[11:29]  ⁵ sn The name Sarai (a variant spelling of “Sarah”) means “princess” (or “lady”). Sharratu was the name of the wife of the moon god Sin. The original name may reflect the culture out of which the patriarch was called, for the family did worship other gods in Mesopotamia.

[11:29]  ⁶ sn The name Milcah means “Queen.” But more to the point here is the fact that Malkatu was a title for Ishtar, the daughter of the moon god. If the women were named after such titles (and there is no evidence that this was the motivation for naming the girls “Princess” or “Queen”), that would not necessarily imply anything about the faith of the two women themselves.

[12:6]  ⁷ tn Or “terebinth.”

[12:6]  ⁸ sn The Hebrew word Moreh (מוֹרֶה, moreh) means “teacher.” It may well be that the place of this great oak tree was a Canaanite shrine where instruction took place.

[12:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “as far as the place of Shechem, as far as the oak of Moreh.”

[12:6]  ¹⁰ tn The disjunctive clause gives important information parenthetical in nature – the promised land was occupied by Canaanites.

[13:7]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew term רִיב (riv) means “strife, conflict, quarreling.” In later texts it has the meaning of “legal controversy, dispute.” See B. Gemser, “The rîb – or Controversy – Pattern in Hebrew Mentality,” Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East [VTSup], 120-37.

[13:7]  ¹² sn Since the quarreling was between the herdsmen, the dispute was no doubt over water and vegetation for the animals.

[13:7]  ¹³ tn This parenthetical clause, introduced with the vav (ו) disjunctive (translated “now”), again provides critical information. It tells in part why the land cannot sustain these two bedouins, and it also hints of the danger of weakening the family by inner strife.

[14:10]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Now the Valley of Siddim [was] pits, pits of tar.” This parenthetical disjunctive clause emphasizes the abundance of tar pits in the area through repetition of the noun “pits.”

[14:10]  sn The word for “tar” (or “bitumen”) occurs earlier in the story of the building of the tower in Babylon (see Gen 11:3).

[14:10]  ¹⁵ tn Or “they were defeated there.” After a verb of motion the Hebrew particle שָׁם (sham) with the directional heh (שָׁמָּה, shammah) can mean “into it, therein” (BDB 1027 s.v. שָׁם).

[14:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the rest.”

[14:10]  ¹⁷ sn The reference to the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah must mean the kings along with their armies. Most of them were defeated in the valley, but some of them escaped to the hills.

[19:16]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Lot) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[19:16]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “in the compassion of the Lord to them.”

[19:16]  ²⁰ tn Heb “brought him out and placed him.” The third masculine singular suffixes refer specifically to Lot, though his wife and daughters accompanied him (see v. 17). For stylistic reasons these have been translated as plural pronouns (“them”).

[21:7]  ²¹ tn Heb “said.”

[21:7]  ²² tn The perfect form of the verb is used here to describe a hypothetical situation.

[32:13]  ²³ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[32:13]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and he took from that which was going into his hand,” meaning that he took some of what belonged to him.

[32:13]  ²⁵ sn The Hebrew noun translated gift can in some contexts refer to the tribute paid by a subject to his lord. Such a nuance is possible here, because Jacob refers to Esau as his lord and to himself as Esau’s servant (v. 4).

[35:16]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and there was still a stretch of the land to go to Ephrath.”

[35:16]  ²⁷ tn Normally the verb would be translated “she gave birth,” but because that obviously had not happened yet, it is better to translate the verb as ingressive, “began to give birth” (cf. NIV) or “went into labor.”

[45:19]  ²⁸ tn The words “to say” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.