Genesis 22

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 115, 74

   אַחַר הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה "after these words" is the phrase of 15:1, and it frames this chapter at both ends (v. 20). דָּבָר is "word" throughout (115a), and the phrase leaves open whose words are meant. b. Sanhedrin 89b and Genesis Rabbah 55:4 supply them: the words of the Satan, who said that Abraham had made a feast for Isaac's weaning (21:8) and offered nothing to Elohim; or the words of Ishmael, who boasted to Isaac that he had been circumcised at thirteen, and Isaac answered that he would give his whole body if he were asked. The WPRB's "after these things" is the plain wording of the phrase and decides nothing.

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "God did tempt Abraham" (KJV) / "God tested Abraham" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 57, 46

   נִסָּה, the piel of נָסָה, is to put to the proof: "to test you Elohim has come, so that his fear may be on your faces" (Exod 20:20); "to afflict you, to test you, to know what was in your heart" (Deut 8:2; 13:4); David "had not tried" Saul's armour and took it off (1 Sam 17:39). The people test Adonai at Massah, the place named from the verb (Exod 17:2, 7; Deut 6:16). The LXX has ἐπείραζεν, Heb 11:17 πειραζόμενος. In 1611 "tempt" still meant "try"; in English now it means to entice to wrong, a false sense (57), and Jas 1:13 says that God tempts no one. "Test" is the first fix (see the Lexicon). The subject is fronted with the article, וְהָאֱלֹהִים נִסָּה, against the usual wayyiqtol: the narrator tells the reader at the start what Abraham is never told. With singular agreement and the article it is "the Elohim" (123c), as at vv. 3 and 9.

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Behold, here I am" (KJV) / "Here am I" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 37, 88

   הִנֵּנִי is הִנֵּה with the suffix "me": "look—me." The home gloss "look" (88) cannot take an object pronoun in English, so the particle and its suffix are printed together as "Here I am," and the phrase is held whole at each of its three occurrences, because the chapter builds on it (37): Abraham answers Elohim (v. 1), his son (v. 7) and the messenger (v. 11) with the same word, and stands ready for all three. It is the answer of one called by name: Jacob to his father (27:18) and to the messenger in the dream (31:11), Joseph (37:13), Moses at the bush (Exod 3:4), Samuel (1 Sam 3:4–8), and Isaiah, "Here I am, send me" (Isa 6:8). Rashi: "This is the answer of the humble, and of one who is ready."

4. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "thine only son Isaac" (KJV) / "your only son Isaac" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 46

   The Hebrew has no second "son": אֶת־בִּנְךָ אֶת־יְחִידְךָ אֲשֶׁר־אָהַבְתָּ אֶת־יִצְחָק, "your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac," a series that narrows to the name. יָחִיד is the one and only: Jephthah's daughter, "and she was his only one" (Judg 11:34); "mourning for an only one" (Amos 8:10; Zech 12:10; Jer 6:26). Ishmael is alive (21:13–21), and b. Sanhedrin 89b and Genesis Rabbah 55:7 hear a dialogue in the series: "Your son." "I have two sons." "Your only one." "This one is the only one of his mother, and that one of his." "Whom you love." "I love them both." "Isaac." The LXX renders יָחִיד by τὸν ἀγαπητόν "the beloved" (also vv. 12, 16), Aquila by μονογενῆ, and Heb 11:17 says Abraham offered up "the only-begotten" (τὸν μονογενῆ). Rom 8:32, "he who did not spare his own son," takes up the LXX of vv. 12 and 16 (οὐκ ἐφείσω τοῦ υἱοῦ σου τοῦ ἀγαπητοῦ); compare Mark 1:11 and John 3:16. The NT follows its Greek (4). "Only one" keeps the bare adjective the Hebrew has; the clash with אַךְ "only" is raised in the report.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   The first occurrence of אָהַב "love" in the Bible is a father's love for the son he is told to give up. The next is Isaac's for Rebekah (24:67) and for Esau (25:28).

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 74, 37

   לֶךְ־לְךָ "go for yourself" occurs in Genesis only here and at 12:1, where Abraham was sent from his father's house "to the land which I will show you." Here he is sent "to one of the mountains which I shall say to you." The two commands frame his story, and Genesis Rabbah 55:7 counts them as the first and the last of his trials. The dative of the self is kept as at 12:1.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 18, 17

   הַמֹּרִיָּה has the article, "the Moriah." Its one other occurrence is 2 Chr 3:1, where Solomon builds the house of Adonai "on Mount Moriah, where he was seen (נִרְאָה) by David his father," at the threshing floor bought "for full silver" (1 Chr 21:22–24; see the note at 23:9). The versions translate the name rather than transcribe it: the LXX "the high land" (τὴν γῆν τὴν ὑψηλήν), Aquila "the visible" (τὴν καταφανῆ), Symmachus "of the vision" (τῆς ὀπτασίας), the Vulgate in terram visionis, Onkelos "the land of worship"; the Peshitta has "the land of the Amorites," and the Samaritan Pentateuch reads מוראה, Moreh (12:6). The narrative hears in it the verb רָאָה "see," at v. 8 and twice at v. 14; Genesis Rabbah 55:7 adds מוֹרָא "awe" and הוֹרָאָה "teaching." The familiar form is printed (18), and the sound stays in the notes (17). Names table.

   See the table

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 17, 106

   וְהַעֲלֵהוּ שָׁם לְעֹלָה "bring him up there for an ascent": the hiphil of עָלָה "go up" with its own noun, which the home glosses "bring up" and "ascent" carry together in English, so the play is in the text (17). The עֹלָה is the offering that goes up whole in fire (8:20; Lev 1). Rashi, after Genesis Rabbah 56:8, takes the verb at its word at v. 12: "I did not say to you, slaughter him, but bring him up." The WPRB has "burnt offering" (106).

9. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "the wood" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 57, 52

   עֵץ is "tree," and the home gloss stands where a tree is meant (23:17, "every tree which is in the field"). The plural עֵצִים is cut timber and firewood, the wood laid on the altar fire (Lev 1:7; 1 Kgs 18:23, 33), and "the trees" laid on a boy's back would give English a false sense (57). The chapter uses the plural five times (vv. 3, 6, 7, 9 twice), so "wood" is held through all of them; the departure is raised in the report as a split by construction. The LXX has ξύλα, the word the Greek versions keep as "wood" (58, 61), so here the two versions agree (52). Genesis Rabbah 56:3 sees Isaac with the wood on his shoulder "like one who carries his cross on his shoulder," and the Christian fathers read the scene the same way (Melito, fragments on Isaac; Tertullian, Against the Jews 10).

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "yonder" (KJV) / "yonder" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 103

    כֹּה is the adverb "so" (15:5; "so says Adonai"), and here, after עַד "as far as" (103), it points to a place: "I will meet [him] yonder" (Num 23:15). English "so" cannot point, and "yonder" is printed. Rashi, after the Tanhuma, hears both: "let us go and see what will become of 'so,'" the promise "so (כֹּה) shall your seed be" (15:5), now walking up the mountain beside him.

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    Abraham says "we will prostrate ourselves and return," in the plural. b. Moed Qatan 18a: "a covenant is made with the lips," for so it was, and both returned. Heb 11:19 reads the plural as faith: "he reckoned that God was able to raise even from the dead." The Hebrew says only "we," and v. 19 names only Abraham as returning (see the note there).

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 39, 74

    מַאֲכֶלֶת is formed from אָכַל "eat": "the eater." It is the Levite's knife (Judg 19:29) and the teeth of a cruel generation, "their jaw-teeth knives" (Prov 30:14). Rashi, after Genesis Rabbah 56:3, explains the name: it devours the flesh, or Israel still "eats" the reward of this knife. English has no knife-word with that root, so "knife" is printed and the root stays here.

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 37

    וַיֵּלְכוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם יַחְדָּו "and they went, the two of them, together," twice (vv. 6, 8), on either side of the one exchange between father and son. Rashi on v. 8: Abraham knew he was going to slaughter, and he went with the same readiness as Isaac, who did not know. After v. 8 Isaac knows, the midrash says, and they still go "together." At v. 19 "together" returns, and Isaac is not named.

14. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a lamb" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 33

    שֶׂה is one head of the flock, sheep or goat, of any age: the Passover שֶׂה is taken "from the sheep or from the goats" (Exod 12:3–5), and Deut 14:4 names "a שֶׂה of sheep and a שֶׂה of goats." "Lamb" is the gloss of כֶּבֶשׂ (Exod 29:38–41; Lev 14:10), the commoner word (33), and כִּבְשָׂה is already "ewe-lamb" (21:28). "Sheep" is printed, as the head of the flock the English reader pictures; the goat it may also be stays here. Isa 53:7, "like a שֶׂה to the slaughter," joins this verb with v. 10's, and John 1:29, 36 ("the lamb of God," ἀμνός) is read with both. The WPRB has "lamb"; the report raises it.

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "God will provide himself a lamb" (KJV) / "God will provide himself the lamb" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 2, 46

    רָאָה with לְ is to see to something for oneself, to pick it out: "I have seen for myself a king among his sons" (1 Sam 16:1); "let Pharaoh see a man" (41:33). "Provide" comes from the Vulgate (Deus providebit), whose "fore-see" is the same verb. The home gloss "see" holds the choosing and keeps the chain of the chapter (vv. 4, 8, 13, 14 twice) and of the name Moriah. The answer has a second reading that English keeps by the comma: "the sheep for the ascent—my son," the son in apposition rather than in address. Genesis Rabbah 56:4 hears it: "Elohim will see for himself the sheep; and if not, you are the sheep for the ascent, my son."

16. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "bound" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 25, 33

    עָקַד occurs only here, and gives the chapter its Jewish name, the עֲקֵדָה. The same book has its adjective: the flocks of Jacob are עֲקֻדִּים "streaked," marked round the legs (30:35, 39–40; 31:8–12) (25). m. Tamid 4:1 sets the verb against the general one: the daily lamb was not bound (כּוֹפְתִין) but trussed (מְעַקְּדִין), its forelegs tied to its hind legs. "Truss" says that. "Bind" is left for אָסַר (42:24; Judg 15–16), the common verb (33). The WPRB has "tied up."

17. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "to slay his son" (KJV, RSV)

    Ruling 2

    שָׁחַט is the verb of sacrificial slaughter, the cutting of the throat: of the ascent (Lev 1:5, 11), of the Passover (Exod 12:6), of children given to idols (Ezek 16:21; Isa 57:5). It is kept apart from הָרַג "kill" and from זָבַח "sacrifice." "Slay" in modern English suggests battle. The infinitive is the last word of the movement: "his son" closes vv. 9–10 three times.

18. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 62, 74

    The name is called twice, as to Jacob (46:2), Moses (Exod 3:4) and Samuel (1 Sam 3:10). Rashi: the doubling is a mark of love and of urgency. The messenger of Adonai (62) speaks in the first person as Elohim: "you have not withheld your son… from me" (v. 12), and "by myself I have sworn" (v. 16), as the messenger spoke to Hagar (16:10–13; 21:17–18).

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    "Now I know." Genesis Rabbah 56:7 reads it as "now I have made known" to all the world how Abraham loves Elohim; Rashi, "now I have an answer for the Satan and for the nations." Ibn Ezra keeps the plain sense and gives it a theology: the knowing is the deed's own, known now as done.

20. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "thou fearest God" (KJV) / "you fear God" (RSV)

    Rulings 107, 38, 123

    יְרֵא is the verbal adjective of יָרֵא "fear": "one fearing," a standing quality, as Job is "fearing Elohim and turning from bad" (Job 1:1, 8). The word order, predicate first, is kept: "that fearing Elohim are you." אֱלֹהִים has no agreeing verb in the clause. The speaker is the messenger of Adonai, who speaks as the one Abraham has not withheld his son from ("from me"), so the agreement is by reference to the speaker and the capital is printed (107). That differs from 20:11, where Abraham speaks of "the fear of elohim" in a foreign place and the lowercase stands (38, 123c). The WPRB has "God." The case is raised in the report.

21. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "behind him a ram" (KJV) / "a ram" (RSV)

    Ruling 74

    The Masoretic text has אַיִל אַחַר "a ram behind," with no "him." Many Hebrew manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the LXX (κριὸς εἷς), the Peshitta and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan read אֶחָד "one," a single letter's difference (ר / ד), which gives the RSV's "a ram." The Masoretic text is printed. "Behind" may be a place (behind him, at his back) or a time (afterward, Ibn Ezra), and English "behind" without the pronoun keeps both. Genesis Rabbah 56:9 hears "after": after all the generations Israel will be caught in sins and redeemed by the ram's horn.

22. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 74

    נֶאֱחַז is the niphal of אָחַז "catch, hold," the root of אֲחֻזָּה "tenure" (17:8; 23:4, 9, 20): the ram is held in the thicket, and in the next chapter Abraham gets his first land held as a grave. Its horns are the shofar of the New Year: "blow before me with a ram's horn, so that I remember for you the binding of Isaac son of Abraham, and reckon it to you as if you had bound yourselves before me" (b. Rosh Hashanah 16a). m. Avot 5:6 counts "the ram of Abraham" among the things created at twilight on the eve of the first Sabbath.

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    The place takes its name from Abraham's answer at v. 8: יְהוָה יִרְאֶה "Adonai will see." The KJV transliterates, "Jehovah-jireh." The name is a sentence and English can carry it, so it is translated (17). Its consonants also sound in "the Moriah" (v. 2; see the note there) and in the niphal that follows.

24. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen" (KJV) / "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 46

    בְּהַר יְהוָה יֵרָאֶה has two readings. (a) The niphal of רָאָה is impersonal or passive: "it will be seen," "it will be provided" (KJV, RSV). (b) The niphal is the verb of appearing, of Adonai's being seen (12:7; 17:1; 18:1; Exod 23:17, "every male shall be seen before the face of the Lord Adonai"), and its subject is Adonai: "on the mountain Adonai is seen." The LXX reads (b): "on the mountain the Lord was seen" (ἐν τῷ ὄρει κύριος ὤφθη); the Vulgate splits the difference, in monte Dominus videbit; Onkelos has "here generations shall worship before Adonai." The conjunctive accent on בְּהַר joins it to the name, "the mountain of Adonai," the temple mountain of Isa 2:3 and Ps 24:3, and 2 Chr 3:1 places the temple where Adonai "was seen." The saying turns Abraham's active "will see" into a passive "will be seen": Adonai sees, and on his mountain he is seen. "He will be seen" holds Adonai as subject and leaves the impersonal reading to this note (1); "he" may also be the one seen to, the provided victim.

25. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 21, 46

    בִּי נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי "by myself I have sworn" is the only oath Elohim swears to the patriarchs in the narrative of Genesis itself. Later texts look back to it: "the land which he swore" (24:7; 26:3; 50:24); Moses pleads "you swore to them by yourself" (Exod 32:13); and "by myself I have sworn" returns in Isa 45:23 and Jer 22:5; 49:13. Heb 6:13–18 quotes v. 17 and argues that "since he had no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself." The oath has no "if" with an unspoken curse; it is a positive oath introduced by כִּי "that," so ruling 21's formula does not apply.

26. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "saith the LORD" (KJV) / "says the LORD" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 10

    נְאֻם is a noun in the construct, "utterance of," not a verb, and the noun stays a noun (10). It is the prophets' formula (Isa 1:24; Amos 2:11; Jer 1:8, hundreds of times) and the word of the seer's oracle: "oracle of Balaam son of Beor" (Num 24:3–4, 15–16), "oracle of David son of Jesse" (2 Sam 23:1). In the Torah נְאֻם יְהוָה occurs only here and at Num 14:28, both in a divine oath. "Oracle" is the first fix; "utterance" belongs to מִלָּה. The WPRB has "declares the LORD."

27. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 8, 46

    אֹיְבָיו has a singular suffix, "his enemies," agreeing with זַרְעֲךָ "your seed," a collective singular. The pronoun is kept (8), and so is the question it raised: Gal 3:16 argues from the singular "seed" that the promise speaks of one. The same blessing is given to Rebekah at her leaving: "may your seed possess the gate of those who hate him" (24:60). The stars repeat 15:5; the sand returns at 32:13.

28. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "shall … be blessed" (KJV) / "bless themselves" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 46, 4

    The verb is the hithpael וְהִתְבָּרְכוּ, the reflexive stem: the nations "shall bless themselves" by Abraham's seed, that is, use it as their formula of blessing ("may Elohim make you like…," 48:20; Ps 72:17; Jer 4:2). The same promise has the hithpael again at 26:4 and the niphal at 12:3, 18:18 and 28:14, which may be passive. The LXX has the passive throughout (ἐνευλογηθήσονται), and Acts 3:25 and Gal 3:8 quote that Greek, which the NT follows (4). Here the stem is plain, and the reflexive is printed. The difference bears on whether the nations receive blessing or only invoke it, a load-bearing point in Christian reading of the promise (46).

29. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "because thou hast obeyed my voice" (KJV) / "because you have obeyed my voice" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 39

    עֵקֶב is a noun, formed like עָקֵב "heel," the hind end of a thing and so what follows on it: "in keeping them there is great consequence" (Ps 19:12); "the consequence of humility is the fear of Adonai" (Prov 22:4). With אֲשֶׁר it is a conjunction (26:5; 2 Sam 12:10; Amos 4:12). "In consequence that" keeps the noun; Everett Fox has "in consequence of your hearkening." It is the root of Jacob's name: he holds his brother's heel (25:26) and "heels" him twice (27:36). "Obeyed" is the KJV's and RSV's for שָׁמַע בְּקוֹל "hear the voice," whose home gloss holds.

30. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    "And Abraham returned to his lads": only Abraham, though at v. 5 he said "we will return." Isaac is not named again until 24:62. Genesis Rabbah 56:11 asks where Isaac was, and answers that Abraham sent him to Shem to study. A later tradition, known to the medieval commentators and rejected by Ibn Ezra ("whoever says that Abraham slew him and left him… has said the opposite of what is written"), held that Isaac's blood was shed. The verb "together" (יַחְדָּו) last joined father and son (vv. 6, 8); here it joins Abraham and the lads.

31. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 90, 91

    Nahor's line (vv. 20–24) is a short genealogy, and its numbers keep the Hebrew order (91). It gives Nahor twelve sons, eight by Milcah and four by a concubine, as Ishmael has twelve chieftains (25:13–16) and Jacob twelve sons (35:22–26). Several of the names are peoples and places: Uz, the land of Job (Job 1:1); Buz, the people of Elihu "the Buzite" (Job 32:2; Jer 25:23); Aram; Chesed, the eponym of the Chaldeans (כַּשְׂדִּים); Maacah, an Aramean kingdom (2 Sam 10:6). Bethuel "bore" Rebekah, the qal of יָלַד with a male subject (90). She is the only granddaughter named, and the genealogy exists for her: the next chapter sends Abraham's servant to find her. Names table.

    See the table

32. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    פִּילֶגֶשׁ "concubine" is a woman joined to a man as a secondary wife, of lower standing than the first: Keturah (1 Chr 1:32; compare 25:6), Bilhah (35:22), the Levite's concubine (Judg 19). The word is probably not Semitic, and has been compared with Greek παλλακίς and Latin paelex. Hagar, by contrast, is given to Abram "for a woman" (16:3).