Footnotes

1. Genesis 28:1 tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”
2. Genesis 28:2 tn Heb “Arise! Go!” The first of the two imperatives is adverbial and stresses the immediacy of the departure.
3. Genesis 28:3 tn Heb “El Shaddai.” See the extended note on the phrase “sovereign God” in Gen 17:1.
4. Genesis 28:3 tn Heb “and make you fruitful and multiply you.” See Gen 17:6, 20 for similar terminology.
5. Genesis 28:3 tn The perfect verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here indicates consequence. The collocation הָיָה plus preposition ל (hayah plus lamed) means “become.”
6. Genesis 28:3 tn Heb “an assembly of peoples.”
7. Genesis 28:4 tn Heb “and may he give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you.” The name “Abraham” is an objective genitive here; this refers to the blessing that God gave to Abraham.
8. Genesis 28:4 tn The words “the land” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.
9. Genesis 28:4 tn Heb “the land of your sojournings,” that is, the land where Jacob had been living as a resident foreigner, as his future descendants would after him.
10. Genesis 28:6 tn Heb “to take for himself from there a wife.”
11. Genesis 28:6 tn The infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffix form a temporal clause.
12. Genesis 28:6 tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”
13. Genesis 28:8 tn Heb “saw.”
14. Genesis 28:8 tn Heb “the daughters of Canaan.”
15. Genesis 28:8 tn Heb “evil in the eyes of.”
16. Genesis 28:9 tn Heb “took for a wife.”
17. Genesis 28:11 tn Heb “the place.” The article may indicate simply that the place is definite in the mind of the narrator. However, as the story unfolds the place is transformed into a holy place. See A. P. Ross, “Jacob’s Vision: The Founding of Bethel,” BSac 142 (1985): 224-37.
18. Genesis 28:11 tn Heb “and he spent the night there because the sun had gone down.”
19. Genesis 28:11 tn Heb “he took from the stones of the place,” which here means Jacob took one of the stones (see v. 18).
20. Genesis 28:11 tn Heb “and he put [it at] the place of his head.” The text does not actually say the stone was placed under his head to serve as a pillow, although most interpreters and translators assume this. It is possible the stone served some other purpose. Jacob does not seem to have been a committed monotheist yet (see v. 20-21) so he may have believed it contained some spiritual power. Note that later in the story he anticipates the stone becoming the residence of God (see v. 22). Many cultures throughout the world view certain types of stones as magical and/or sacred. See J. G. Fraser, Folklore in the Old Testament, 231-37.
21. Genesis 28:11 tn Heb “lay down.”
22. Genesis 28:12 tn Heb “and dreamed.”
23. Genesis 28:12 tn Heb “and look.” The scene which Jacob witnessed is described in three clauses introduced with הִנֵּה (hinneh). In this way the narrator invites the reader to witness the scene through Jacob’s eyes. J. P. Fokkelman points out that the particle goes with a lifted arm and an open mouth: “There, a ladder! Oh, angels! and look, the Lord himself” (Narrative Art in Genesis [SSN], 51-52).
24. Genesis 28:12 tn The Hebrew noun סֻלָּם (sullam, “ladder, stairway”) occurs only here in the OT, but there appears to be an Akkadian cognate simmiltu (with metathesis of the second and third consonants and a feminine ending) which has a specialized meaning of “stairway, ramp.” See H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena (SBLDS), 34. For further discussion see C. Houtman, “What Did Jacob See in His Dream at Bethel? Some Remarks on Genesis 28:10-22, ” VT 27 (1977): 337-52; J. G. Griffiths, “The Celestial Ladder and the Gate of Heaven,” ExpTim 76 (1964/65): 229-30; and A. R. Millard, “The Celestial Ladder and the Gate of Heaven,” ExpTim 78 (1966/67): 86-87.
25. Genesis 28:13 tn Heb “the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.” The Hebrew word for “father” can typically be used in a broader sense than the English word, in this case referring to Abraham (who was Jacob’s grandfather). For stylistic reasons and for clarity, the words “your father” are supplied with “Isaac” in the translation.
26. Genesis 28:13 tn The Hebrew term אֶרֶץ (ʾerets) can mean “[the] earth,” “land,” “region,” “piece of ground,” or “ground” depending on the context. Here the term specifically refers to the plot of ground on which Jacob was lying, but at the same time this stands by metonymy for the entire land of Canaan.
27. Genesis 28:14 tn This is the same Hebrew word translated “ground” in the preceding verse.
28. Genesis 28:14 tn The verb is singular in the Hebrew; Jacob is addressed as the representative of his descendants.
29. Genesis 28:14 tn The translation understands the Niphal stem to be middle voice here; the normal passive for בָּרַךְ (barakh) is Pual. The middle voice may be expressed here as “they may consider themselves blessed,” “they may receive/find blessing,” “the may become blessed.” See the notes at 12:3 and 18:18.
30. Genesis 28:15 tn Heb “Look, I [am] with you.” The clause is a nominal clause; the verb to be supplied could be present (as in the translation) or future, “Look, I [will be] with you” (cf. NEB).
31. Genesis 28:16 tn Heb “woke up from his sleep.” This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.
32. Genesis 28:16 tn Heb “said.”
33. Genesis 28:18 tn Heb “and he got up early…and he took.”
34. Genesis 28:18 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
35. Genesis 28:18 tn See the note on this phrase in v. 11.
36. Genesis 28:18 tn Heb “standing stone.”sn Sacred stone. Such a stone could be used as a boundary marker, a burial stone, or as a shrine. Here the stone is intended to be a reminder of the stairway that was “erected” and on which the Lord “stood.” (In Hebrew the word translated “sacred stone” is derived from the verb translated “erected” in v. 12 and “stood” in v. 13.) Since the top of the stairway reached the heavens where the Lord stood, Jacob poured oil on the top of the stone. See C. F. Graesser, “Standing Stones in Ancient Palestine,” BA 35 (1972): 34-63; and E. Stockton, “Sacred Pillars in the Bible,” ABR 20 (1972): 16-32.
37. Genesis 28:19 tn The name Bethel means “house of God” in Hebrew (see v. 17).
38. Genesis 28:20 tn Heb “bread,” although the term can be used for food in general.
39. Genesis 28:21 tn Heb “and I return in peace to the house of my father.”
40. Genesis 28:22 tn The disjunctive clause structure (conjunction + noun/subject) is used to highlight the statement.
41. Genesis 28:22 tn The infinitive absolute is used before the finite verb for emphasis.
42. Genesis 28:22 tn Heb “and all which you give to me I will surely give a tenth of it to you.” The disjunctive clause structure (conjunction + noun/object) highlights this statement as well.