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21 Finally Jacob said[a] to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my time of service is up.[b] And I want to sleep with her.”[c] 22 So Laban invited all the people[d] of that place and prepared a feast. 23 In the evening he brought his daughter Leah[e] to Jacob,[f] and he slept with her.[g]

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Footnotes

  1. Genesis 29:21 tn Heb “and Jacob said.”
  2. Genesis 29:21 tn Heb “my days are fulfilled.”
  3. Genesis 29:21 tn Heb “I want to approach.” The verb בּוֹא (boʾ) with the preposition אֶל (ʾel) means “come to” or “approach,” but is also used as a euphemism for sexual relations. The verb is a cohortative; it may be subordinated to the preceding request, “so that I may sleep with,” or it may be an independent clause expressing his desire.
  4. Genesis 29:22 tn Heb “men.”
  5. Genesis 29:23 tn Heb “and it happened in the evening that he took Leah his daughter and brought her.”sn His daughter Leah. Laban’s deception of Jacob by giving him the older daughter instead of the younger was God’s way of disciplining the deceiver who tricked his older brother. D. Kidner says this account is “the very embodiment of anti-climax, and this moment a miniature of man’s disillusion, experienced from Eden onwards” (Genesis [TOTC], 160). G. von Rad notes, “That Laban secretly gave the unloved Leah to the man in love was, to be sure, a monstrous blow, a masterpiece of shameless treachery…It was certainly a move by which he won for himself far and wide the coarsest laughter” (Genesis [OTL], 291).
  6. Genesis 29:23 tn Heb “to him”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  7. Genesis 29:23 tn Heb “came to” or “approached,” a euphemism for sexual relations. See note at v. 21.