Genesis 38:1
New International Version
At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah.

New Living Translation
About this time, Judah left home and moved to Adullam, where he stayed with a man named Hirah.

English Standard Version
It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

Berean Standard Bible
About that time, Judah left his brothers and settled near a man named Hirah, an Adullamite.

King James Bible
And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

New King James Version
It came to pass at that time that Judah departed from his brothers, and visited a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah.

New American Standard Bible
And it came about at that time, that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

NASB 1995
And it came about at that time, that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

NASB 1977
And it came about at that time, that Judah departed from his brothers, and visited a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

Legacy Standard Bible
Now it happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

Amplified Bible
Now at that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to [stay with] a certain Adullamite named Hirah.

Christian Standard Bible
At that time Judah left his brothers and settled near an Adullamite named Hirah.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
At that time Judah left his brothers and settled near an Adullamite named Hirah.

American Standard Version
And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And it occurred at that time, Yehuda came down from the presence of his brothers and he departed to an Arlemite man, and his name was Khira.

Brenton Septuagint Translation
And it came to pass at that time that Judas went down from his brethren, and came as far as to a certain man of Odollam, whose name was Iras.

Contemporary English Version
About that time Judah left his brothers in the hill country and went to live near his friend Hirah in the town of Adullam.

Douay-Rheims Bible
At that time Juda went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Odollamite, named Hiras.

English Revised Version
And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
About that time Judah left his brothers and went to stay with a man from Adullam whose name was Hirah.

Good News Translation
About that time Judah left his brothers and went to stay with a man named Hirah, who was from the town of Adullam.

International Standard Version
Right about then, Judah left his brothers and went to live with an Adullamite man named Hirah.

JPS Tanakh 1917
And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

Literal Standard Version
And it comes to pass, at that time, that Judah goes down from his brothers, and turns aside to a man, an Adullamite, whose name [is] Hirah;

Majority Standard Bible
About that time, Judah left his brothers and settled near a man named Hirah, an Adullamite.

New American Bible
About that time Judah went down, away from his brothers, and pitched his tent near a certain Adullamite named Hirah.

NET Bible
At that time Judah left his brothers and stayed with an Adullamite man named Hirah.

New Revised Standard Version
It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and settled near a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah.

New Heart English Bible
It happened at that time that Judah moved away from his brothers and stayed with an Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

Webster's Bible Translation
And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

World English Bible
At that time, Judah went down from his brothers, and visited a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

Young's Literal Translation
And it cometh to pass, at that time, that Judah goeth down from his brethren, and turneth aside unto a man, an Adullamite, whose name is Hirah;

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
Judah and Tamar
1About that time, Judah left his brothers and settled near a man named Hirah, an Adullamite. 2There Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua, and he took her as a wife and slept with her.…

Cross References
Genesis 38:12
After a long time Judah's wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had finished mourning, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went up to his sheepshearers at Timnah.

Genesis 38:20
Now when Judah sent his friend Hirah the Adullamite with the young goat to collect the items he had left with the woman, he could not find her.

Joshua 15:35
Jarmuth, Adullam, Socoh, Azekah,

1 Samuel 22:1
So David left Gath and took refuge in the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and the rest of his father's household heard about it, they went down to him there.


Treasury of Scripture

And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brothers, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

A.

turned.

Genesis 19:2,3
And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night…

Judges 4:18
And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle.

2 Kings 4:8
And it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a great woman; and she constrained him to eat bread. And so it was, that as oft as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread.

Adullamite.

Joshua 12:15
The king of Libnah, one; the king of Adullam, one;

Joshua 15:35
Jarmuth, and Adullam, Socoh, and Azekah,

1 Samuel 22:1
David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam: and when his brethren and all his father's house heard it, they went down thither to him.

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Adullam Adullamite Departed Friend Hirah Judah Time Turned Turneth Visited
Genesis 38
1. Judah begets Er, Onan, and Shelah.
6. Er's marriage with Tamar, and death.
8. The trespass of Onan.
11. Tamar is reserved for Shelah.
12. Judah's wife dies.
13. Tamar deceives Judah.
27. She bears twins, Pharez and Zarah.














(1) At that time.--This does not mean at the time of Joseph's sale; for as there was only an interval of twenty-two years between that event and the descent into Egypt, this period is scarcely long enough for the events recorded in this chapter. According to the usual chronology, Judah, Leah's fourth son, would not have been more than eight years old when he left Padan-aram, and only one year at most older than Joseph, the son of Jacob's old age. But the more true chronology which we have followed, gives time for him to have been Joseph's senior by twenty years, and the events recorded here probably began soon after his father's arrival at the tower of Eder.

Adullamite.--The town of Adullam, near which was David's famous cave, has been clearly identified by Lieut. Conder (Tent-work, ii. 158). It lay in the great valley of Elah, which formed the highway from Hebron to the country of the Philistines, some two or three miles south of Shochoh, and fifteen or sixteen miles west by north from Hebron. Judah "went down" thither, not as Abenezra and others have supposed, because it was to the south, but because it was towards the sea, and the road is an actual descent from the hill country of Judah into the Shephelah, or lowland, in which Adullam was situated. The sons of Jacob often, probably, with a few retainers, made expeditions in search of pastures for their cattle; and Hirah, apparently, had shown Judah hospitality on some such journey, and finally a friendship had grown up between them. "Turned in to," however, literally means pitched (his tent) close by; and the friendship between Judah and Hirah, thus accidentally formed, seems to have ended in Hirah taking the charge of Judah's cattle.

Verse 1. - And it came to pass. The present chapter appears to interrupt the continuity of the narrative of Joseph's history. Partly on this account, and partly because the name Jehovah occurs in it (vers. 7, 10), it has been pronounced a later Jehovistic interpolation (Tuch, Bleek, Davidson, Coleuso). Its design has been explained as an attempt to glorify the line of David by representing it as sprung from Judah (Bohlen), or to disclose the origin of the Levitate law of marriage among the Jews (Knobel); but the incidents here recorded of Judah and his family are fitted to reflect dishonor instead of glory on the ancestry of David (Havernick); and the custom here mentioned of raising up seed to a dead brother by marrying his widow, though the idea may have originated with Judah (Lange), is more likely to have descended from earlier times (Delitzsch, Keil). Rightly understood, the object of the present portion of the record appears to have been not simply to prepare the way for the subsequent (Genesis 46:8-27) genealogical register (Gerlach), or to contrast the wickedness of Judah and his sons with the piety and chastity of Joseph in Egypt (Wordsworth), or to recite the private history of one of Christ's ancestors (Bush, Murphy, 'Speaker's Commentary'), or to show that the pre-eminence of Judah in the patriarchal family was due exclusively to grace (Candlish), but also and chiefly to justify the Divine procedure in the subsequent deportation of Jacob and his sons to Egypt (Keil). The special danger to which the theocratic family was exposed was that of intermarrying with the Canaanites (Genesis 24:3; Genesis 28:6). Accordingly, having carried forward his narrative to the point where, in consequence of Joseph's sale, a way begins to open up for the transference of the patriarchal house to the lend of the Pharaohs, the historian makes a pause to introduce a passage from the life of Judah, with the view of proving the necessity of such removal, by showing, as in the case of Judah, the almost certainty that, if left in Canaan, the descendants of Jacob would fall before the temptation of marrying with the daughters of the land, with the result, in the first instance, of a great and rapid moral deterioration in the holy seed, and with the ultimate effect of completely obliterating the line of demarcation between them and the surrounding heathen world. How the purity of the patriarchal family was guarded till it developed into a powerful nation, first by its providential withdrawment in infancy from the sphere of temptation (Genesis 46:5), then by its separate establishment in Goshen beside a people who regarded them with aversion (Genesis 46:34), and latterly by its cruel enslavement under Pharaoh (Exodus 1:10), is a subject which in due course engages the attention of the writer. At that time.

(1) If the date of Judah's marriage, as is most probable, was shortly after the sale of Joseph (Keil, Kurtz, Lange, Alford, Wordsworth, Quarry), since at the time of that atrocity Judah was still living with his brethren, the only difficulty calling for solution is to account for the birth of Judah's grandchildren, Hezron and Hamul (the sons of Pharez, the twin child of Judah by Tamar), in the short interval of twenty-two years which preceded Jacob's descent into Egypt without making Er and Onan marry in comparative boyhood. The case becomes a little less perplexing if Hezron and Hamul, though said to have come into Egypt (Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:1; Deuteronomy 10:22), may be regarded as having been born there (Hengstenberg), since twenty-two years afford sufficient space for the birth of Judah's three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah, which may have taken place during the first three years after their father's marriage, and for the birth of Pharez and Zarah, even if Er married as late as eighteen. Of course if the narrative requires the birth of Hezron and Hamul to have taken place in Canaan (Kalisch), it is simply impossible to hold that all this occurred within little more than a score of years. Hence

(2) the date of Judah's marriage has been placed before the sale of Joseph (Augustine, Aben Ezra, Rosenmüller, Drechsler, Baumgarten, Gerlach, Ainsworth, Candlish, Murphy, Inglis); but even on this assumption the task is arduous to make the birth of Hezron and Hamul occur before the emigration of their great-grandfather to Egypt. For as Judah was not more than four years older than Joseph (cf. Genesis 29:35 with Genesis 30:25), his age at the time of Joseph's sale could not have been more than twenty-one. But placing Judah's marriage at the earliest possible date, viz., in his fifteenth year, only substitutes an interval of twenty-eight years instead of one of twenty-two, in which Judah's son Er must be born, grow up to manhood, (say at fifteen) marry, die, and leave his widow Tamar, who, after marrying with Onan and waiting for Shelah (which would consume at least another year), must become the mother of twin sons by her father-in-law (for which another year would be required), and must see the elder of the two married at ten years of age, if his sons are to be born upon the soft of Canaan. On either hypothesis, therefore, it seems indispensable to hold that Judah's grandsons were born in Egypt; and in this case there is little gained by putting Judah's marriage earlier than Joseph s sale, i.e. in Judah's twenty-first year. That Judah went down - from Hebron (Genesis 37:14), or the mountains (Keil), towards the south (Aben Ezra, Rosenmüller) from his brethren, - setting up a separate and independent establishment apart from them; "not only immediately after Joseph was sold, but also on account of it," "in a fit of impenitent anger" (Kurtz), in a spirit of remorse (Lange) - and turned in to a certain Adullamite, - literally, and pitched (sc. his tent, Genesis 26:15) up to, as far as, or close by, a man, an Adullamite, i.e. belonging to Adullam, a town in the Hebron valley (Joshua 15:85); in the time of the conquest the seat of a Canaanitish king (Joshua 12:15), afterwards celebrated for its connection with the history of David (1 Samuel 22:1, 2; 2 Samuel 23:13), subsequently mentioned in Scripture (2 Chronicles 11:7; Nehemiah 11:30; Micah 1:15), but never successfully identified (vide ' Land and the Book,' pp. 606, 607; Robinson, 2:175) - whose name was Hirah - "Nobility" (Gesenius).

Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
About
וַֽיְהִי֙ (way·hî)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 1961: To fall out, come to pass, become, be

that
הַהִ֔וא (ha·hi·w)
Article | Pronoun - third person feminine singular
Strong's 1931: He, self, the same, this, that, as, are

time,
בָּעֵ֣ת (bā·‘êṯ)
Preposition-b, Article | Noun - common singular
Strong's 6256: Time, now, when

Judah
יְהוּדָ֖ה (yə·hū·ḏāh)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 3063: Judah -- 'praised', a son of Jacob, also the southern kingdom, also four Israelites

left
וַיֵּ֥רֶד (way·yê·reḏ)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 3381: To come or go down, descend

his brothers
אֶחָ֑יו (’e·ḥāw)
Noun - masculine plural construct | third person masculine singular
Strong's 251: A brother, )

and settled
וַיֵּ֛ט (way·yêṭ)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 5186: To stretch out, spread out, extend, incline, bend

near
עַד־ (‘aḏ-)
Preposition
Strong's 5704: As far as, even to, up to, until, while

a man
אִ֥ישׁ (’îš)
Noun - masculine singular construct
Strong's 376: A man as an individual, a male person

named
וּשְׁמ֥וֹ (ū·šə·mōw)
Conjunctive waw | Noun - masculine singular construct | third person masculine singular
Strong's 8034: A name

Hirah,
חִירָֽה׃ (ḥî·rāh)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 2437: Hirah -- a friend of Judah

an Adullamite.
עֲדֻלָּמִ֖י (‘ă·ḏul·lā·mî)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 5726: Adullamite -- inhabitant of Adullam


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OT Law: Genesis 38:1 It happened at that time that Judah (Gen. Ge Gn)
Genesis 37:36
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