Kejadian 3:8

The Judgment Oracles of God at the Fall

3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God moving about ¹  in the orchard at the breezy time ²  of the day, and they hid ³  from the Lord God among the trees of the orchard.

Kejadian 3:16

3:16 To the woman he said,

“I will greatly increase ⁴  your labor pains; ⁵ 

with pain you will give birth to children.

You will want to control your husband, ⁶ 

but he will dominate ⁷  you.”

Kejadian 8:22

8:22 “While the earth continues to exist, ⁸ 

planting time ⁹  and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

and day and night will not cease.”

Kejadian 13:7

13:7 So there were quarrels ¹⁰  between Abram’s herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen. ¹¹  (Now the Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the land at that time.) ¹² 

Kejadian 18:10

18:10 One of them ¹³  said, “I will surely return ¹⁴  to you when the season comes round again, ¹⁵  and your wife Sarah will have a son!” ¹⁶  (Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, not far behind him. ¹⁷ 

Kejadian 18:14

18:14 Is anything impossible ¹⁸  for the Lord? I will return to you when the season comes round again and Sarah will have a son.” ¹⁹ 

Kejadian 30:38

30:38 Then he set up the peeled branches in all the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink. He set up the branches in front of the flocks when they were in heat and came to drink. ²⁰ 

Kejadian 33:18

33:18 After he left Paddan Aram, Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem in the land of Canaan, and he camped near ²¹  the city.

Kejadian 36:24

36:24 These were the sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah (who discovered the hot springs ²²  in the wilderness as he pastured the donkeys of his father Zibeon).

Kejadian 38:12

38:12 After some time ²³  Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. After Judah was consoled, he left for Timnah to visit his sheepshearers, along with ²⁴  his friend Hirah the Adullamite.

Kejadian 41:30

41:30 But seven years of famine will occur ²⁵  after them, and all the abundance will be forgotten in the land of Egypt. The famine will devastate ²⁶  the land.

Kejadian 47:23

47:23 Joseph said to the people, “Since I have bought you and your land today for Pharaoh, here is seed for you. Cultivate ²⁷  the land.

[3:8]  ¹ tn The Hitpael participle of הָלָךְ (halakh, “to walk, to go”) here has an iterative sense, “moving” or “going about.” While a translation of “walking about” is possible, it assumes a theophany, the presence of the Lord God in a human form. This is more than the text asserts.

[3:8]  ² tn The expression is traditionally rendered “cool of the day,” because the Hebrew word רוּחַ (ruakh) can mean “wind.” U. Cassuto (Genesis: From Adam to Noah, 152-54) concludes after lengthy discussion that the expression refers to afternoon when it became hot and the sun was beginning to decline. J. J. Niehaus (God at Sinai [SOTBT], 155-57) offers a different interpretation of the phrase, relating יוֹם (yom, usually understood as “day”) to an Akkadian cognate umu (“storm”) and translates the phrase “in the wind of the storm.” If Niehaus is correct, then God is not pictured as taking an afternoon stroll through the orchard, but as coming in a powerful windstorm to confront the man and woman with their rebellion. In this case קוֹל יְהוָה (qol yÿhvah, “sound of the Lord”) may refer to God’s thunderous roar, which typically accompanies his appearance in the storm to do battle or render judgment (e.g., see Ps 29).

[3:8]  ³ tn The verb used here is the Hitpael, giving the reflexive idea (“they hid themselves”). In v. 10, when Adam answers the Lord, the Niphal form is used with the same sense: “I hid.”

[3:16]  ⁴ tn The imperfect verb form is emphasized and intensified by the infinitive absolute from the same verb.

[3:16]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ 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).

[8:22]  ⁸ tn Heb “yet all the days of the earth.” The idea is “[while there are] yet all the days of the earth,” meaning, “as long as the earth exists.”

[8:22]  ⁹ tn Heb “seed,” which stands here by metonymy for the time when seed is planted.

[13:7]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ sn Since the quarreling was between the herdsmen, the dispute was no doubt over water and vegetation for the animals.

[13:7]  ¹² 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.

[18:10]  ¹³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (one of the three men introduced in v. 2) has been specified in the translation for clarity. Some English translations have specified the referent as the Lord (cf. RSV, NIV) based on vv. 1, 13, but the Hebrew text merely has “he said” at this point, referring to one of the three visitors. Aside from the introductory statement in v. 1, the incident is narrated from Abraham’s point of view, and the suspense is built up for the reader as Abraham’s elaborate banquet preparations in the preceding verses suggest he suspects these are important guests. But not until the promise of a son later in this verse does it become clear who is speaking. In v. 13 the Hebrew text explicitly mentions the Lord.

[18:10]  ¹⁴ tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic, using the infinitive absolute with the imperfect tense.

[18:10]  sn I will surely return. If Abraham had not yet figured out who this was, this interchange would have made it clear. Otherwise, how would a return visit from this man mean Sarah would have a son?

[18:10]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “as/when the time lives” or “revives,” possibly referring to the springtime.

[18:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and there will be (הִנֵּה, hinneh) a son for Sarah.”

[18:10]  ¹⁷ tn This is the first of two disjunctive parenthetical clauses preparing the reader for Sarah’s response (see v. 12).

[18:14]  ¹⁸ tn The Hebrew verb פָּלָא (pala’) means “to be wonderful, to be extraordinary, to be surpassing, to be amazing.”

[18:14]  ¹⁹ sn Sarah will have a son. The passage brings God’s promise into clear focus. As long as it was a promise for the future, it really could be believed without much involvement. But now, when it seemed so impossible from the human standpoint, when the Lord fixed an exact date for the birth of the child, the promise became rather overwhelming to Abraham and Sarah. But then this was the Lord of creation, the one they had come to trust. The point of these narratives is that the creation of Abraham’s offspring, which eventually became Israel, is no less a miraculous work of creation than the creation of the world itself.

[30:38]  ²⁰ sn He put the branches in front of the flocks…when they came to drink. It was generally believed that placing such “visual aids” before the animals as they were mating, it was possible to influence the appearance of their offspring. E. A. Speiser notes that “Jacob finds a way to outwit his father-in-law, through prenatal conditioning of the flock by visual aids – in conformance with universal folk beliefs” (Genesis [AB], 238). Nevertheless, in spite of Jacob’s efforts at animal husbandry, he still attributes the resulting success to God (see 31:5).

[33:18]  ²¹ tn Heb “in front of.”

[36:24]  ²² tn The meaning of this Hebrew term is uncertain; Syriac reads “water” and Vulgate reads “hot water.”

[38:12]  ²³ sn After some time. There is not enough information in the narrative to know how long this was. The text says “the days increased.” It was long enough for Shelah to mature and for Tamar to realize she would not have him.

[38:12]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and he went up to the shearers of his sheep, he and.”

[41:30]  ²⁵ tn The perfect with the vav consecutive continues the time frame of the preceding participle, which has an imminent future nuance here.

[41:30]  ²⁶ tn The Hebrew verb כָּלָה (kalah) in the Piel stem means “to finish, to destroy, to bring an end to.” The severity of the famine will ruin the land of Egypt.

[47:23]  ²⁷ tn The perfect verbal form with the vav consecutive is equivalent to a command here.