Genesis 13

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   The names are printed in their familiar English forms; their Hebrew forms and meanings are in the names table. הַנֶּגְבָּה is the Negev with the ending of direction, "Negevward," as in v. 14; the Negev is the dry south of Judah, and the word is also simply "south" (see the note at 12:9). Abram goes up out of Egypt by the road he went down (12:10), and the chapter retraces his first journey stage by stage, back to the altar between Bethel and Ai (12:8).

   See the table

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "very rich" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 39

   כָּבֵד is "heavy": the hand of Moses (Exod 17:12), Eli's body (1 Sam 4:18), a heavy famine (12:10; 41:31). Wealth is weight, and the same root gives כָּבוֹד, the "weight" that is glory: Jacob's sons say that Jacob "has made all this כָּבוֹד" out of Laban's flocks (31:1). The verb is a qal of state, "was heavy." "Rich" is left for עָשַׁר, which comes in 14:23, where Abram will not be made rich by the king of Sodom. The material word "silver" is kept, not "money" (39).

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 103, 39

   מַסָּע is the noun of נָסַע "break camp" (12:9; 13:11): the pulling up of tent pegs, one stage after another, as in the list of Israel's "stages" in the wilderness (Num 33:1–2). The span is a range opened by מִן, "from the Negev to Bethel," so עַד is "to" (103); the second עַד is in space without a range, "as far as the place" (103). The ketiv of "his tent" is written with an old form of the suffix (אהלה); the qere אָהֳלוֹ has the same sense (19).

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 39

   "Lift" is the home gloss of נָשָׂא, which holds lifting and carrying in one word: the land could not "lift" them, that is, carry or support them (KJV, RSV "bear"). The same verb is used twice more in this chapter of Lot and Abram lifting their eyes (vv. 10, 14), so the land that cannot lift them both is set beside the two men who lift their eyes to choose. The verb is masculine with the feminine אֶרֶץ, as if its subject were "the land" thought of as a place.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 95

   רִיב is a quarrel and also a lawsuit, the word of the prophets' case against Israel (Mic 6:2; Hos 4:1). מְרִיבָה in v. 8 is its noun of the same root, "quarreling," and is the place-name Meribah, "Quarreling," at the waters of Exod 17:7 and Num 20:13. The shepherds quarrel; Abram asks that there be no quarreling between the kinsmen themselves.

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 2

   אֲנָשִׁים אַחִים "men, brothers": the core gloss of אָח holds, though Lot is Abram's brother's son (11:27, 31; 14:12). Kinsmen are "brothers" (14:14, 16; 29:15). The two plurals stand side by side, and English keeps the comma.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 10

   The Hebrew uses denominative verbs of "right" and "left": הֵימִין "go right" and הִשְׂמְאִיל "go left" (also 2 Sam 14:19; Isa 30:21). Facing east, the orientation of the Hebrew compass, the left is the north and the right is the south: in 14:15 Hobah lies "on the left of Damascus," to its north. The two cohortatives are "let me go," Abram's offer of either side.

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "plain" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 39

   כִּכָּר is a round thing: a round loaf of bread (Exod 29:23; 1 Sam 2:36), a round weight of metal, the talent (Exod 25:39; 1 Kgs 9:14), and the round of the Jordan valley, where Solomon's bronze was cast in the clay ground (1 Kgs 7:46). "Plain" turns a shape into a flat expanse. The material word "circle" is kept (39), and it holds in vv. 11 and 12 and through 19:17–29.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 1, 2

   מַשְׁקֶה is "a watering": a well-watered place here and in Ezek 45:15, the drink of a feast (1 Kgs 10:21), and the cupbearer who gives drink (40:1). It is the noun of the hiphil of שָׁקָה "give drink," the verb of the river that went out of Eden "to give drink to the garden" (2:10). The comparison follows at once: "like the garden of Adonai," Eden itself, and "like the land of Egypt," watered by the Nile, which Abram has just left. The dash holds the parenthesis "before Adonai ruined Sodom and Gomorrah" where the Hebrew puts it, in the middle of the comparison; the verb שִׁחֵת "ruin" is the verb of the flood (6:13, 17) and of Sodom (19:13–14, 29). Zoar (19:20–23) closes the view to the south-east.

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Lot journeyed east" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 3, 93

    מִקֶּדֶם is "from the east," the מִן of the place where something stands or from which it is seen. At 2:8 the same word is printed "in the east" (93), and at 11:2 the builders broke camp "from the east." Lot is moving east from Bethel toward the Jordan, so the phrase is read by the versions as "eastward" (LXX ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν, "from the east," keeps the preposition; the Vulgate ab oriente). The preposition is kept and the direction is left to the reader. Genesis Rabbah 41:7 and Rashi hear in קֶדֶם the Ancient One (קַדְמוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם): Lot "removed himself from the Ancient of the world," saying, "I want neither Abram nor his God." The word is the same one that names the Kadmonite in 15:19.

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "pitched his tent" (KJV) / "moved his tent" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 95, 96

    אָהַל is the verb made from אֹהֶל "tent," found only here, v. 18 and Isa 13:20: to move a tent from one place to another, or to pitch it. "Tent" as a verb is שָׁכַן's (96), so this verb takes "move tent." Lot moves his tent "as far as Sodom," and Abram moves his to Mamre: the same verb, two ends.

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 89, 2

    חַטָּאִים "sinners" is the noun of the family of חָטָא "sin" (89), the word of Ps 1:1. The phrase "to Adonai" makes the badness of Sodom a sin against him; the verse is set just after Lot's choice, and the reader knows where Lot has pitched his tent. Ezek 16:49 names the sin of Sodom: pride, plenty of bread and careless ease, and not strengthening the hand of the poor and needy.

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 3

    The four directions take the ending of direction: northward, Negevward, eastward and seaward. The Negev stands for the south and "the sea," the Mediterranean, for the west, as the Hebrew compass names them. Lot "lifted his eyes" and chose for himself (v. 10); now Adonai tells Abram to lift his eyes, and gives him all of it.

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 103, 2

    עַד עוֹלָם is in time, so עַד is "until" (103), and עוֹלָם keeps the core gloss "age." "To you … and to your seed" joins Abram and his offspring in one gift, as Paul reads the singular "seed" in Gal 3:16. זֶרַע "seed" is also offspring (3:15), and the one gloss keeps both audible.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 37, 2

    "Like the dust of the land" takes up the chain of 3:14 and 3:19 ("dust you are"), now turned into a promise; it returns at 28:14. The verb מָנָה "count" is used twice, of the dust and of the seed. At 15:5 the image is the stars, and the verb is סָפַר "number."

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 112, 44, 18

    אֵלוֹן is "terebinth" (112), the great tree of a holy place, as at Moreh (12:6). The LXX has "the oak of Mamre" (τὴν δρῦν τὴν Μαμβρη) and the Vulgate convallem Mambre, "the valley." Mamre is also the name of Abram's Amorite ally (14:13, 24). Here Adonai will appear to him at 18:1, and here Sarah and Abraham are buried, in the cave of Machpelah "before Mamre, that is Hebron" (23:19).