Genesis 24

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   בָּא בַּיָּמִים "come into the days" is the idiom of 18:11 (Abraham and Sarah), Josh 13:1; 23:1 and 1 Kgs 1:1, kept as the body of the phrase. בַּכֹּל "in everything" names no object. b. Bava Batra 16b gives three readings of it: that Abraham had a daughter, that he had none, and that her name was Bakkol, "In-everything." Rashi notes that בַּכֹּל has the numerical value of בֵּן "son" (52): the blessing is Isaac, for whom the chapter finds a woman. The clause stands subject first with a perfect, as at 4:1, and "had blessed" gives the background to what follows. The slave repeats it to Laban's house in v. 35.

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "his eldest servant of his house" (KJV) / "his servant, the oldest of his house" (RSV)

   Rulings 34, 2

   עֶבֶד splits under ruling 34: "slave" when the person is owned, "servant" in deferential speech and in titles of service to Adonai. This man is Abraham's property, "the elder of his house, the one ruling over all that was his," the household slave set over the rest, as Joseph is in Potiphar's house (39:4–6). The narrator calls him הָעֶבֶד throughout; he names himself the same way to Laban's house ("Abraham's slave am I," v. 34); and slaves are listed among Abraham's goods in v. 35. "Servant" is printed only at v. 14, where Isaac is Adonai's servant in the slave's prayer. The man is never named in the chapter. Rashi (on v. 39) identifies him with Eliezer of Damascus, whom Abraham once expected to be his heir (15:2–3).

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 74, 39

   The oath is sworn with the hand under the thigh here and in Jacob's charge to Joseph (47:29), and nowhere else. יָרֵךְ is the thigh and the loins as the seat of offspring: the souls "who came out of Jacob's thigh" (46:26; Exod 1:5). Rashi, after Gen. Rabbah 59:8, takes it that one swears on an object of a commandment, the circumcision (17:10–14). Ibn Ezra takes it as the posture of a man under his master's authority. The body word is printed as it stands (39). The oath under the thigh is sworn about the seed, which is what is at stake in the chapter.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 9, 107

   Both אֱלֹהֵי are in construct and in apposition to the name, so they take the capital by reference (107). Nowhere in this chapter does אֱלֹהִים have plural agreement, and ruling 123(c) does not apply. "Elohim of the skies and Elohim of the land" claims the whole world for Abraham's Elohim on the eve of a journey to another land. In v. 7 Abraham says only "Elohim of the skies," and the LXX adds "and the God of the land" there to match. Rashi reads the difference as history: when Adonai took Abraham from his father's house he was Elohim of the skies alone, since no one on the land knew him; through Abraham he is now called Elohim of the land too. "Elohim of the skies" returns in the late books (Jonah 1:9; Ezra 1:2; Neh 1:4).

5. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "thou shalt be clear from this my oath" (KJV) / "you will be free from this oath of mine" (RSV)

   Rulings 6, 2

   The niphal of נָקָה is the release of the law-court: the man who struck and did not kill "shall be acquitted" (Exod 21:19); "whoever touches her shall not be acquitted" (Prov 6:29); in the piel, Adonai "acquitting will not acquit" (Exod 34:7). "Acquitted" keeps the legal sense that "clear" and "free" lose. The root's adjective, נָקִי "clean" (v. 41), and its noun, נִקָּיוֹן "cleanness" (20:5), keep its concrete sense. In the retelling the slave varies the sentence: he uses the verb and then the adjective (v. 41), and in both places has אָלָה "imprecation" for Abraham's שְׁבוּעָה "oath" here. The two nouns stay apart (6). שְׁבוּעָה is the oath sworn, the noun of שָׁבַע "swear" (vv. 3, 7, 9, 37). אָלָה is the curse a man calls down on himself if he breaks it; the two stand together in Num 5:21, "the oath of the imprecation."

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Mesopotamia" (KJV, RSV)

   Ruling 18

   אֲרַם נַהֲרַיִם is "Aram of the two rivers," the land of the upper Euphrates and its tributaries around Harran (Deut 23:5; Judg 3:8; the heading of Ps 60). The KJV and RSV take "Mesopotamia" from the LXX (Μεσοποταμίαν) and the Vulgate, a Greek name for a larger region between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Hebrew name is printed in its own form, as names are (18). "The city of Nahor" may be the city where Nahor lived, Harran (27:43; 29:4), or the town Nahur near Harran known from the Mari letters.

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "he made his camels to kneel down" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 20

   וַיַּבְרֵךְ is the hiphil of בָּרַךְ, here the verb of the knee (בֶּרֶךְ): "kneel" in the qal (Ps 95:6; 2 Chr 6:13), "make kneel" in the hiphil, here only. The lexicon's home gloss "bless" is the piel's, and the hiphil cannot carry it. The departure is noted here and raised in the report as a split by stem (20). The same letters run through the chapter as "bless": Adonai blessed Abraham (v. 1), "Blessed Adonai" (v. 27), "blessed of Adonai" (v. 31), "Adonai has blessed my lord" (v. 35), "I blessed Adonai" (v. 48), and the family "blessed Rebekah" (v. 60). The camels kneel at the well in a chapter of blessing; the Hebrew reader hears it, and the English reader has this note.

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 17

   הַקְרֵה is the hiphil of קָרָה "happen": "make it happen before my face this day." The qal is the chance that turns out not to be chance: Ruth "happened" on the field of Boaz (וַיִּקֶר מִקְרֶהָ, Ruth 2:3). The same hiphil is Jacob's lie to his father, "because Adonai your Elohim made it happen before me" (27:20). קָרָה sounds like קָרָא in לִקְרַאת "to meet," and the chapter's meetings follow the prayer: the slave runs "to meet" Rebekah (v. 17), and Isaac is going in the field "to meet" her (v. 65). The KJV's "send me good speed" and the RSV's "grant me success" give the outcome. The Hebrew asks Adonai to arrange an event.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 37, 2

   עַיִן is "eye," and also a spring, the eye through which the ground's waters look out. The home gloss is held through the chapter so that the chain stays visible (37). The slave stands at "the eye of the waters" (vv. 13, 43, as at 16:7); Rebekah goes down "to the eye" (vv. 16, 45); Laban runs out "to the eye" and finds the man standing by the camels "at the eye" (vv. 29–30); the slave came "to the eye" this day (v. 42). The chapter ends with eyes: Isaac "lifted his eyes" and Rebekah "lifted her eyes" (vv. 63–64). The sign was asked at the eye, and the meeting happens when eyes are lifted. The WPRB prints "spring."

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 20

    הֹכַחְתָּ is the hiphil of יָכַח "set right," the verb of a case decided between two parties (31:37, 42; Isa 2:4). The KJV and RSV have "appointed." The slave asks Adonai to decide the case, and in the retelling he makes Adonai the verb's subject: "the woman whom Adonai has set right for the son of my lord" (v. 44). The test he sets is hospitality: water given to a stranger and his animals, unasked, as Abraham gave it at Mamre (18:1–8).

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a virgin" (KJV) / "a maiden" (RSV)

    Rulings 40, 2

    בְּתוּלָה is a young woman of marriageable age, and in most uses one who has not lain with a man (Lev 21:13–14; Deut 22:14–21). Joel 1:8 has a בְּתוּלָה mourning "the husband of her youth," and the next clause here, "and no man had known her," either explains the word or adds what it does not say. Rashi takes it as an addition. No stranger sense is attested, so the expected reading is printed with the evidence (40). The word is kept apart from עַלְמָה "young woman," which the slave uses of her in v. 43 (see the note there), and from נַעֲרָה "girl," the narrator's word (vv. 14, 16, 28, 55, 57).

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher" (KJV) / "Pray give me a little water to drink from your jar" (RSV)

    Rulings 6, 25

    הַגְמִיאִינִי is the hiphil of גָּמָא "gulp," the verb of the war-horse that "gulps the ground" (Job 39:24); its noun גֹּמֶא is the papyrus that drinks up the marsh (Exod 2:3; Job 8:11). "Give me to gulp" is a thirsty man's word. When the slave retells the scene he says "give me drink" (הַשְׁקִינִי, vv. 43, 45), the verb Rebekah used of herself (v. 14); the two stay different in English (6).

13. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "emptied her pitcher" (KJV) / "emptied her jar" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20

    The piel of עָרָה is to drain a vessel to the bottom, so laying it bare: the chest emptied of its silver (2 Chr 24:11), the soul "drained out to death" (Isa 53:12), "do not drain out my soul" (Ps 141:8). "Empty out" is the hiphil of רִיק, and "drain" keeps the two apart. The hiphil of עָרָה, "lay bare" (Lev 20:18–19), is fixed when reached (20).

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 25, 74

    מִשְׁתָּאֵה is the hithpael of שָׁאָה, a rare root whose qal is to lie waste or crash (Isa 6:11). In this stem it is the stare of a man astonished and still; Rashi has "dumbfounded." Targum Onkelos has "waiting," the LXX κατεμάνθανεν "was observing closely," the Vulgate contemplabatur. Some take it as a form of שָׁעָה "gaze" (4:4–5); "gaze" is that verb's gloss, and "stare" keeps them apart. The two participles, "staring… keeping silent," hold the man still while she works.

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold" (KJV) / "a gold ring weighing a half shekel, and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels" (RSV)

    Rulings 5, 33, 39

    נֶזֶם is a ring worn in the nose (v. 47; Isa 3:21; Ezek 16:12; Prov 11:22, "a gold נֶזֶם in a pig's snout") or in the ear (35:4; Exod 32:2). "Hoop" names the ring without placing it; "ring" is left by frequency (33) for טַבַּעַת, the ring of the seal and of the ark (41:42; Exod 25:12). בֶּקַע is a weight, from בָּקַע "split," the half-shekel: "a beka a head, half the shekel" (Exod 38:26). It is printed as a weight-name, as "shekel" is (5); stone weights inscribed bqʿ have been found. The second weight has no unit, "ten of gold their weight," and the KJV and RSV supply "shekels."

16. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Whose daughter art thou?" (KJV) / "Tell me whose daughter you are" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 6

    בַּת מִי is a construct with the interrogative as its second member, "daughter of whom," and the Hebrew order is kept, with the noun first, as in her answer, "daughter of Bethuel am I" (v. 24). "Whom" is the home gloss "who" in the case English requires after "of." In the retelling (v. 47) the question is the same, word for word, and so is the English (6).

17. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth" (KJV) / "who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master" (RSV)

    Rulings 123, 2, 65

    חֶסֶד is "loyalty" in every book (123a): what one party owes another inside a bond, here Adonai's to Abraham, and in v. 49 what the slave asks of Laban's house toward Abraham. אֱמֶת is first fixed here as "truth." It is the firmness of a thing that holds: the word that proves true (42:16; Deut 22:20) and the person who keeps faith (Exod 18:21, "men of truth"). It shares a root with אָמַן but is kept apart from the hiphil "believe" (121a), the niphal "be firm," and אֻמְנָם / אָמְנָה "truly." The RSV's "faithfulness" is left for אֱמוּנָה, to be fixed when reached. The pair returns in v. 49 and in Exod 34:6, "abounding in loyalty and truth," and the slave's "a way of truth" (v. 48) uses the same word. The blessing formula "Blessed Adonai…" is verbless in the Hebrew and stays so (65).

18. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 74

    לָבָן is "white." Laban enters running, and the next verse turns back to say why: he ran when he saw the gold on his sister's hands and heard her words (v. 30). Gen. Rabbah 60:7 and Rashi read the order as a portrait: he ran for the gold, thinking the man rich. He will be Jacob's host and match for twenty years (29:13–31:55), and he speaks here before his father (v. 50).

19. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "I have prepared the house" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20

    The piel of פָּנָה is to make a thing turn away, so to clear a space: "clear the way" (Isa 40:3; 57:14; 62:10; Mal 3:1), "you cleared the ground before it" (Ps 80:10). The lexicon's "face (v.)" is the qal, as in vv. 49 and 63; it cannot carry the piel, and the departure is raised in the report as a split by stem (20). Rashi has Laban clear the house of idols.

20. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "he ungirded his camels" (KJV) / "ungirded the camels" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 57, 105

    וַיְפַתַּח is the piel of פָּתַח "open," which in this stem is to loosen what is fastened: the belt of the loins that is not loosed (Isa 5:27), "you have loosed my sackcloth" (Ps 30:12), the bonds of the wild ass loosed (Job 39:5). "Opened the camels" would make a false sense in English (57), so "loosed" is printed; the home gloss stands elsewhere (105b). The girths and loads are loosed, or (Rashi) the muzzles. The subject of "loosed" and "gave" is not named. It may be Laban, the host, or the man himself, who has just come in; both verbs are printed "he."

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 19

    The qere וַיּוּשַׂם is passive, "there was put." The ketiv וַיִּישֶׂם can be read as active, "and he put," with the host as subject. The qere is translated (19); the sense hardly differs.

22. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 2, 37

    The slave's speech (vv. 34–49) retells vv. 1–27 to Rebekah's family. Where the Hebrew repeats, the English repeats word for word, so that the changes can be seen. They are of three kinds. (a) Abraham's words are fitted to the hearers. "In whose inward part I am dwelling" becomes "in whose land" (v. 37; v. 3). "To my land and to my birth" becomes "to the house of my father and to my clan" (vv. 38, 40; v. 4). "Will not be willing to go after me to this land" becomes "will not go after me" (v. 39; v. 5), and the question of Isaac going back (vv. 5–8) is dropped. "Adonai, Elohim of the skies, who took me from the house of my father" becomes "Adonai, before whose face I have walked about," and "he will make your way prosper" is added (v. 40; v. 7). The release from the oath gets a second case, "if they do not give her to you," and the "oath" becomes an "imprecation" (v. 41; v. 8). (b) The slave's own prayer is told with its words changed. "The girl" becomes "the young woman" (v. 43; v. 14); "give me to gulp" becomes "give me drink" (vv. 43, 45; v. 17); "your camels I will give drink" becomes "for your camels I will draw" (v. 44; v. 14); "her you have set right for your servant, for Isaac" becomes "she is the woman whom Adonai has set right for the son of my lord" (v. 44; v. 14); and the speaking not yet finished is now "to my heart" (v. 45; v. 15). (c) The order of events changes. In v. 47 he asks whose daughter she is and then puts the hoop on her nose; in vv. 22–23 the gold came first. Rashi reads the change as tact: a stranger who gave gold before he knew her name would not be trusted. Gen. Rabbah 60:8 sets the length of this retelling against the brevity of many laws: "the talk of the slaves of the fathers is finer before the Omnipresent than the Torah of the sons."

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 21, 6

    אִם לֹא in an oath is the literal "if not," with the curse left unspoken (21): "if you do not go to my father's house… (may such and such befall you)." It has the force of "you shall surely go." Abraham's words in v. 4 began with כִּי "but"; the slave gives them the oath form, and the variation stays (6).

24. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    אֻלַי "perhaps" is written here without the ו it has in v. 5 (אוּלַי), so that the letters can be read אֵלַי "to me." Gen. Rabbah 59:9 and Rashi hear the slave's own hope in the spelling. He had a daughter and looked for a pretext to have Abraham turn "to me," and so marry Isaac to her. Abraham answered that the son of the blessed would not join with the daughter of the cursed (Canaan, 9:25). The word is translated as it is read; the tradition hangs on the spelling.

25. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "then shalt thou be clear from this my oath" (KJV) / "then you will be free from my oath" (RSV)

    Rulings 6, 2

    Abraham said "oath" (שְׁבוּעָה, v. 8); the slave says אָלָה "imprecation," the curse that an oath calls down on the one who breaks it (Num 5:21; Deut 29:11, 13). He also matches the verb "be acquitted" with the adjective נָקִי "clean," innocent, with nothing left to answer for ("clean blood," Deut 19:10). See the note at v. 8.

26. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the virgin" (KJV) / "the young woman" (RSV)

    Rulings 46, 93, 6

    עַלְמָה is a young woman of age to marry, with nothing said of whether she has known a man: Miriam watching over her brother (Exod 2:8), "the way of a man with a young woman" (Prov 30:19), the עֲלָמוֹת "without number" beside queens and concubines (Song 6:8). Its masculine עֶלֶם is the "lad" of 1 Sam 17:56 and 20:22. The narrator called Rebekah נַעֲרָה "girl" and בְּתוּלָה "virgin" (v. 16); in the retelling the slave uses neither, and the change stays visible (6). The verse bears on Isa 7:14 (46). The LXX has ἡ παρθένος here as it does there, and Matt 1:23 quotes Isaiah in that Greek; Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion put νεᾶνις "young woman" at Isa 7:14, and Justin's Dialogue with Trypho (43, 67, 71) argues the point. Jerome, on Isa 7:14, cites this verse to argue that עַלְמָה is a virgin kept hidden (abscondita). Luther, in 1523, offered a hundred gulden to anyone who could show it used of a married woman. Printing "virgin" here would settle the Isaiah question from Genesis. "Young woman" is the word's attested sense, and the doctrinal question stays where it belongs, at Isa 7:14 and Matt 1:23 (93).

27. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 74

    "Bad or good" is a merism for nothing at all, neither refusal nor consent: Laban is warned in a dream to speak to Jacob neither good nor bad (31:24, 29), and Absalom spoke to Amnon neither bad nor good (2 Sam 13:22). Bethuel is named here after his son and does nothing else in the chapter; in v. 55 it is "her brother and her mother" who answer, and the gifts go to them (v. 53). Rashi, on v. 55, has Bethuel struck dead in the night for trying to prevent the match.

28. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "jewels of silver" (KJV) / "jewelry of silver" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 39

    כְּלִי is any made thing: a vessel (Lev 11:32), a weapon (27:3), a musical instrument (1 Chr 15:16), baggage (1 Sam 17:22), the furnishings of the tent (Exod 25:9). "Article" is its home gloss, the made thing without deciding its use; made of silver and gold, these are likely ornaments, as in Exod 3:22; 11:2. מִגְדָּנוֹת "bounties" belongs with מֶגֶד, "the bounty of the skies… the bounty of the land" (Deut 33:13–16): gifts of the best, not named by kind. The gifts to her brother and mother stand where a bride-price would (34:12; Exod 22:15–16), though the word מֹהַר is not used.

29. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a few days, at the least ten" (KJV) / "a while, at least ten days" (RSV)

    Rulings 10, 6, 2

    יָמִים אוֹ עָשׂוֹר is "days, or a ten." עָשׂוֹר is a noun, a set of ten: the ten-stringed lyre (Ps 33:2) and the tenth day of a month (Exod 12:3; Lev 16:29). It is printed as a noun, apart from the number עֶשֶׂר "ten" (v. 10) and the ordinal "tenth." The KJV and RSV supply "at the least." Bare "days" can mean a year (Lev 25:29; 1 Sam 27:7), and Rashi, after Gen. Rabbah 60:12, reads the pair as "a year, or ten months," the time given a virgin to prepare for marriage (m. Ketubbot 5:2).

30. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 10

    מֵנִקְתָּהּ is the hiphil participle of יָנַק, "the one suckling her," her wet-nurse, kept as a verb (10). She is named only at her death: Deborah, buried below Bethel under the "oak of weeping" (35:8). A nurse raised a child and stayed with her (2 Kgs 11:2).

31. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 81, 14, 5, 57

    The family's blessing is lined by the translator under ruling 81(b), for this verse only; the Leningrad Codex runs it as prose. It is a couplet, divided at the atnach under רְבָבָה, the two colons parallel: the increase of her seed, then its victory. רְבָבָה is ten thousand, and a number past counting (Deut 33:17; 1 Sam 18:7, "Saul has struck his thousands, and David his myriads"). "Myriad" is the Greek cognate (LXX εἰς χιλιάδας μυριάδων); its living English sense, ten thousand and beyond counting, is the Hebrew's (5, 57), and it keeps the word apart from אֶלֶף "thousand" and from "ten." The blessing is still said to a Jewish bride at her veiling before the wedding.

32. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them" (KJV) / "may your descendants possess the gate of those who hate them" (RSV)

    Rulings 6, 8

    The second colon is Adonai's oath to Abraham at Moriah, "your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies" (22:17), in the mouth of Rebekah's family, with one word changed: אֹיְבָיו "his enemies" becomes שֹׂנְאָיו "his haters." The two stay different (6). The suffix is singular, as in 22:17: the collective seed is treated as one, and Gal 3:16 makes an argument of the singular. The KJV and RSV "them" resolves it; "his" is printed (8).

33. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 10, 74

    בָּא מִבּוֹא is "had come from coming": the infinitive בּוֹא with the place as its goal, kept as a verb (10). The KJV has "came from the way of the well Lahai-roi," the RSV "had come from Beer-lahai-roi." The LXX reads another text: "Isaac was going through the wilderness to the well of the vision." Beer-lahai-roi is the well where Hagar was found and named Adonai "El Roi" (16:13–14), and Isaac settles by it after Abraham's death (25:11). Gen. Rabbah 60:14 and Rashi have Isaac coming from fetching Hagar, to bring her back to his father (Keturah, 25:1).

34. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "to meditate in the field" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 1, 25, 46

    לָשׂוּחַ is found only here. The nearest word is the verb שִׂיחַ "muse, talk, complain" (Ps 77:4, 7; 119:15, "I will muse on your precepts") and its noun, a complaint poured out (Ps 102:1; 1 Sam 1:16). The versions divide: the LXX ἀδολεσχῆσαι, "to muse" or "to talk"; the Vulgate ad meditandum; Targum Onkelos "to pray," and from this verse b. Berakhot 26b has Isaac institute the afternoon prayer, as Abraham the morning (19:27) and Jacob the evening (28:11). The Peshitta has "to walk," and some moderns relate the word to שׂוּט "roam" or to שִׂיחַ "shrub" (2:5; 21:15), "to gather brushwood." "Muse" holds thinking, talking to oneself and prayer, the readings the Hebrew root supports, and decides nothing among them (1). לִפְנוֹת עֶרֶב is "as evening faced," the turn of the day toward night (Deut 23:12): the qal of פָּנָה keeps its gloss, the infinitive printed as a clause (10).

35. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "she lighted off the camel" (KJV) / "she alighted from the camel" (RSV)

    Ruling 2

    נָפַל "fall" is used of getting down from a chariot: Naaman "fell from the chariot" to meet Gehazi (2 Kgs 5:21). The KJV and RSV give that sense. The home gloss holds both, and keeps the speed and force of the moment. Gen. Rabbah 60:15 says she saw his majesty and was dazzled; Rashi, that she let herself slide down. Isaac lifted his eyes in v. 63, and now Rebekah lifts hers: the meeting is told from each side.

36. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 9, 22

    "My lord" is now Isaac. Through the chapter the slave's "my lord" has been Abraham (vv. 12, 27, 35–36, 54, 56); Abraham has given Isaac "all that is his" (v. 36; 25:5), and he does not appear again until his last days (25:1–8). Rebekah takes the veil (צָעִיף) at the sight of the man she will marry. Tamar takes one to pass as what she is not (38:14, 19).

37. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "told Isaac all things that he had done" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20, 115

    The piel of סָפַר is "recount," to number out a story event by event (Exod 10:2; Ps 78:3–4); the lexicon's "number (v.)" is the qal, counting the stars (15:5), and the piel is printed under the split its row already names (20). "All the words that he had done": דָּבָר is "word" throughout (115a), and here the words are deeds, the matters and their telling at once. The slave told the story at length in vv. 34–49; the narrator gives the third telling in one line.

38. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 74, 40

    הָאֹהֱלָה שָׂרָה אִמּוֹ has the article on "the tent" before a name, which Hebrew does not use for a tent "of Sarah": literally "into the tent, Sarah his mother." Most read a construct, "the tent of Sarah his mother," as printed. Gen. Rabbah 60:16 and Rashi read it as a sentence: he brought her into the tent, and she was Sarah his mother. The lamp had burned from sabbath eve to sabbath eve, the dough was blessed and the cloud rested on the tent while Sarah lived; when Rebekah came, they returned. Some take "Sarah his mother" as a gloss that entered the text.

39. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Isaac was comforted after his mother's death" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 101, 2, 57

    The niphal of נחם is "be sorry" under ruling 101 (6:6–7), and that gloss here would make a false sense (57). With "after" or "over" a dead person the niphal is to be comforted, to take comfort and end the mourning: Judah "was comforted" after his wife died (38:12), David "was comforted over Amnon" (2 Sam 13:39), Rachel "refuses to be comforted over her children" (Jer 31:15). "Was comforted" is printed, and the report raises it as a split by construction. The KJV and RSV supply "death." This is the first time the Bible says that a man loved a woman, and the love follows the marriage. The chapter began with Abraham old; it ends with Sarah's tent (23:2) filled and her son's mourning over.