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Genesis 27 has Isaac tell Esau his home will be “by the richness of the earth.” The Greek Septuagint reads the same Hebrew preposition as “away from,” turning Esau’s share in the earth’s richness into exile from it.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 27:39
Hebrew Bible
38 Esau said to his father, “Do you have only that one blessing, my father? Bless me too!” Then Esau wept loudly. 39 So his father Isaac said to him, “See here, your home will be by the richness of the earth, and by the dew of the sky above. 40 You will live by your sword but you will serve your brother. When you grow restless, you will tear off his yoke from your neck.”
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Genesis 27:39
Septuagint
38 And Esau said to his father, Have you only one blessing, father? Bless, Please, me also, father. And Isaac being troubled, Esau cried aloud and wept. 39 And Isaac his father answered and said to him, Look, your dwelling shall be away from the fatness of the earth, and away from the dew of heaven from above. 40 And you shall live by your sword, and shall serve your brother; and there shall be a time when you shall break and loosen his yoke from your neck.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The blessing on Esau is limited because of the far-reaching blessing already given to Jacob, and is largely determined by it. In verse 28 Isaak had blessed Jacob by “May God give you from dew of heaven and from the fatness of the earth”; compare comments ad loc. The prepositional phrases recur here (though with ἄνωθεν after “heaven”), but in reverse order. In verse 28 the preposition ἀπό was partitive, but here it is privative; thus “behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be (that is, distant from Canaan), and away from the dew of heaven above (that is, in a desert area).” ..."
John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis, SCS 35 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1993), 438.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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