Genesis 46

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 129, 95, 107

   זָבַח זְבָחִים is the verb with its own noun, "sacrificed sacrifices," the shared offering meal of Jacob and Laban (31:54) and of Jethro (Exod 18:12); the pair is declared one root (129a). Beersheba is where Abraham planted a tamarisk and called on the name of ADONAI (21:33), and where ADONAI was seen to Isaac and Isaac built an altar (26:23–25). The sacrifice goes "to the Elohim of his father Isaac," not of Abraham; Genesis Rabbah 94:5 and Rashi say a man owes his father's honor before his grandfather's. Elohim takes the capital by reference (107): the Elohim of this scene speaks with singular verbs in v. 2 and names himself in v. 3.

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "in the visions of the night" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 26, 95

   מַרְאָה is the feminine of מַרְאֶה "sight," what is seen, from רָאָה "see." It is the word of the prophet's visions (Num 12:6; 1 Sam 3:15; Ezek 1:1; 8:3; 40:2) and also the bronze mirrors of the women at the tent (Exod 38:8), the thing one sees in. "Vision" is the home gloss of מַחֲזֶה (15:1, "in a vision"), so it cannot be used here. "Sight" keeps the root that runs through the chapter: Joseph "was seen" to his father, and Israel has now "seen" his face (vv. 29–30). The plural is kept: the night brings sights, as in Ezekiel's "sights of Elohim," and ruling 26 does not reduce a concrete plural. The two nouns of one root share "sight" as a declared pair (136).

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Here am I" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 37, 88

   הִנֵּנִי is the particle הִנֵּה "look" with the suffix "me": "look, me." The answer to a call by name is printed "Here I am" each time it comes (22:1, 7, 11; 27:1, 18; 31:11; 37:13; Exod 3:4), so the chain of answers stays audible (37) where the home gloss "look" would break the idiom (88). The doubled name of the call, "Jacob, Jacob," is the form of 22:11 ("Abraham, Abraham"), Exod 3:4 ("Moses, Moses") and 1 Sam 3:10 ("Samuel, Samuel"). This is the last time Elohim speaks to Jacob in Genesis.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 9, 107, 2

   הָאֵל has the article, "the El," as at 31:13 ("I am the El of Bethel"), and אֱלֹהֵי אָבִיךָ stands in apposition: "the El, Elohim of your father." The WPRB has "God" for each, so it prints two divine names because the Hebrew has two. "Do not fear to go down" answers a fear the text has given reasons for: Isaac was told "do not go down to Egypt" (26:2), and Abram was told his seed would be sojourners, enslaved and afflicted, in a land not theirs (15:13). "I will put you there for a great nation" repeats the promise to Abram (12:2) and the words said of Ishmael (21:13, 18), and Exod 1:7 tells how it is kept.

5. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "and I will also surely bring thee up again" (KJV) / "and I will also bring you up again" (RSV)

   Rulings 6, 10, 126

   The finite verb אַעַלְךָ is the hiphil "bring up"; the infinitive absolute עָלֹה after it is the qal "go up," and גַם "also" stands between them. Ruling 126(g) keeps such a pair with its two stems ("dying, he shall be made to die"), and the house keeps the infinitive as a verb (10): "I will bring you up, also going up." The KJV's "surely" turns the infinitive into an adverb and its "again" adds a return that the verb does not state. Rashi takes the promise as Jacob's burial in the land (50:13). "I, I will go down with you" is the first time Elohim says he will go down with a person into exile, and the Mekhilta (Pisha 14) builds on it the teaching that the Presence goes into exile with Israel.

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 39

   שִׁית יָד עַל עֵינַיִם "set the hand on the eyes" is the closing of a dead man's eyes by his nearest kin, a custom the Greeks also knew (Homer, Odyssey 11.426). It promises that Jacob will die with Joseph beside him, as he does (49:33; 50:1). The concrete phrase is kept, not turned into "close your eyes." "Set" is שִׁית, kept apart from שׂוּם "put" in v. 3.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 18, 91, 74

   The list of 46:8–27 is a genealogy, set out by mothers: Leah's line (vv. 8–15), Zilpah's (vv. 16–18), Rachel's (vv. 19–22) and Bilhah's (vv. 23–25), each closed with a count. The names are printed in their familiar English forms and the Hebrew forms are in the names table; the conjunctions are carried exactly as the Hebrew gives them, so that some lists run "and… and" and others pair the names (v. 16, v. 21). Num 26:5–50 and 1 Chr 2–8 list the same clans with variant names, given in the table.

   See the table

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 18, 2

   The Hebrew name is חֲנוֹךְ, the name of Cain's son and of the Enoch who walked with Elohim (4:17; 5:18–24), and the lexicon prints that one Hebrew name as one English name, "Enoch." The KJV and RSV give Reuben's son the form "Hanoch," which is closer to the Hebrew and marks him off from the patriarch; a reader looking for him in other Bibles, and for the Hanochites (Num 26:5), should look under that form. Midian's son at 25:4 has the same name.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   The name שָׁאוּל is the name of Israel's first king, and the lexicon prints one English name for one Hebrew name; the KJV and RSV give Simeon's son the form "Shaul." "The son of the Canaanite woman" stands apart from the other sons, with no mother named. Genesis Rabbah 80:11, followed by Rashi, takes her to be Dinah, who had been with Shechem the Canaanite (34:2). Num 26:12–13 has Nemuel for Jemuel and Zerah for Zohar; Ohad is in neither Num 26 nor 1 Chr 4:24.

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 110

    The Masoretic text has יוֹב. The Samaritan Pentateuch has ישוב, and the LXX Ιασουβ, Num 26:24 and 1 Chr 7:1 have "Jashub," so the MT form may be a short or damaged spelling. The RSV's "Iob" is printed: it is the MT's own letters, and the KJV's "Job" would give Issachar's son the English name of the man of Uz (אִיּוֹב), a different Hebrew name (110).

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 91, 74

    "Thirty and three" keeps the Hebrew order (91). The names of Leah's line in vv. 8–15 come to thirty-four with Dinah, and two of them, Er and Onan, died in Canaan (v. 12), which leaves thirty-two. The count of thirty-three therefore includes one more person. Ibn Ezra counts Jacob himself, who heads the list in v. 8 ("Jacob and his sons"). Genesis Rabbah 94:9 and b. Bava Batra 123b count Jochebed, the mother of Moses, "who was born to Levi in Egypt" (Num 26:59), born, they say, between the walls as the family entered. The other three totals (16, 14, 7) match their names.

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 18

    "The sons of Dan" is followed by one name. The plural is the list's formula, used for every son whatever the number; Num 26:42 names the same son "Shuham," with the letters turned about, and 1 Chr 7:12 has a Hushim of Benjamin.

13. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "besides" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 126

    מִלְּבַד is the home gloss of לְבַד "alone" with מִן, "apart from"; ruling 126(h) confirmed "besides" for it at 26:1 with a note, and that is printed here. The wives of Jacob's sons are not counted, though they came; nor is any daughter but Dinah and Serah (vv. 15, 17).

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 91, 54, 4, 74

    The two totals are reckoned differently. Sixty-six (v. 26) counts those who came with Jacob and were "going out of his thigh," his own issue: the 70 names of vv. 8–25 less Er and Onan, who died in Canaan, and less Joseph and his two sons, who were already in Egypt, with Jacob himself left out (or, on the other count of the note at v. 15, Jochebed in). Seventy (v. 27) is "the house of Jacob": the sixty-six with Jacob, Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim. Exod 1:5 and Deut 10:22 give seventy. The LXX has seventy-five: in v. 20 it adds five descendants of Joseph born in Egypt (Machir and Galaad of Manasseh's line; Sutalaam and Taam, and Edom, of Ephraim's, after Num 26:29–36 and 1 Chr 7:14–20), gives Joseph "nine souls" in v. 27, and reads "seventy-five" there and at Exod 1:5. A Qumran manuscript of Exodus (4QExod^b) also has seventy-five at Exod 1:5. Stephen follows the Greek in Acts 7:14, "seventy-five souls," and the NT keeps its own number (4). The Masoretic count is printed. Seventy is also the number of the nations in the table of Gen 10, which Deut 32:8 sets beside "the sons of Israel."

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "to direct his face unto Goshen" (KJV) / "to appear before him in Goshen" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20, 1

    לְהוֹרֹת is the hiphil of יָרָה, whose qal "cast" is fixed (31:51). The hiphil is "teach," point out (Exod 15:25, "he taught him a tree"; Exod 4:12, 15; 24:12), the verb of תּוֹרָה. Its object is not stated, and the versions differ. The Samaritan Pentateuch has להראות and the LXX συναντῆσαι αὐτῷ καθ᾽ Ἡρώων πόλιν, "to meet him at Heroonpolis," a different word ("to appear"), which the RSV follows. Onkelos has "to clear the way before him," and the KJV "to direct his face." Genesis Rabbah 95:3, followed by Rashi, reads the verb as teaching: Judah went ahead to set up a house of study in Goshen before Jacob arrived. The MT is printed with the hiphil's own gloss, which holds the guiding and the teaching; the subject of "sent" is Jacob, unnamed, and both "before his face" are left as the Hebrew leaves them. The hiphil "teach" is ruled (136).

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 39

    אָסַר "bind" is the verb of harnessing animals to a chariot (Exod 14:6; 1 Kgs 18:44) and of tying a donkey (49:11), the same verb that bound Simeon (42:24). The home gloss is kept: Joseph "bound" his chariot, the horses to the pole; the KJV has "made ready." The chariot is the one Pharaoh gave him (41:43).

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 74

    וַיֵּרָא אֵלָיו is the niphal of רָאָה "see," "he was seen to him." Elsewhere in Genesis it is the verb of Elohim appearing (12:7; 17:1; 18:1; 26:2, 24; 35:9; 48:3); here a son is "seen" to his father. The KJV and RSV's "presented himself" loses the verb that ties this meeting to Jacob's "now that I have seen your face" (v. 30) and to his "I have seen Elohim face to face" (32:31).

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a good while" (KJV, RSV)

    Ruling 2

    עוֹד is "still," as in v. 30, "you are still living." Joseph weeps on his father's neck and goes on weeping: the adverb measures a weeping that does not stop, and the KJV and RSV turn it into a span of time. The verse does not say that Jacob wept. Rashi, after the midrash, explains why: Jacob did not fall on Joseph's neck or kiss him, because at that moment he was reciting the Shema. Joseph wept "on his neck" as he wept on Benjamin's (45:14), and as Esau fell on Jacob's neck at their meeting (33:4).

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 97

    הַפַּעַם is "this turn" (97), as in Leah's "this turn I will confess ADONAI" (29:35). Jacob had said that he would go down to Sheol mourning for Joseph (37:35) and that grief would bring his grey hair down to Sheol (42:38; 44:29, 31). "Let me die this turn" reverses that: having seen Joseph, he can die now, at this turn of things, and not in mourning. The LXX has "from now on" (ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν).

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    מַעֲשֶׂה is "deed," the noun of עָשָׂה "make, do": what a person does. The question "What are your deeds?" asks what they do for a living, and the KJV and RSV have "occupation"; the plural is kept here and at 47:3.

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 135, 74

    תּוֹעֵבָה is "abhorrence" in every book (135f): what a people's custom abhors, as Egypt abhorred eating bread with Hebrews (43:32) and Israel's sacrifice of flock animals (Exod 8:22). Nothing else in the Hebrew Bible says that Egyptians abhorred shepherds. Herodotus (2.47) reports that swineherds alone of the Egyptians might not enter a temple, and Egyptian tomb paintings draw herdsmen as rough, unkempt men; Onkelos reads the clause as "the Egyptians keep away from" shepherds, and Rashi explains it by the Egyptians' worship of the flock. Joseph turns the abhorrence to use: men whom Egypt abhors will be settled apart, in Goshen.

22. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "unto the Egyptians" (KJV) / "to the Egyptians" (RSV)

    Rulings 18, 134, 135

    The source tags מִצְרַיִם here as H4713, the gentilic "Egyptian," because it means the people. The word is the name of the land, and the house prints it as such, "Egypt," with the tag kept and the departure logged, as at 41:55–56 and 45:2 (134l, 135o).