I will bless those who bless you: the blessing that God grants to Abram is to be extended to include those who show favor and goodwill to Abram. The attitude God takes toward others will depend upon their attitude toward Abram. This line may be translated, for example, “I will show favor to anyone who shows favor to you,” “I will do good to everyone who does good to you,” or sometimes idiomatically “I will show my good heart to all who show their good heart to you.”

And him who curses you I will curse: him translates a singular form of the verb, but the sense is collective. Most translations express the plural in both lines, as does Good News Translation. The Hebrew text has two different verbs meaning to curse, where Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation use a single verb twice. The first Hebrew verb is the one used in 8.21, and the second is the one used in 3.14. See these verses for discussion. There is, however, no attempt to draw a distinction between the two verbs; they are used as a pair of words with the same meaning in this poetic passage. Most languages have adequate terms for cursing in the sense of inflicting harm on someone through a pronouncement against them. If that is not the case, we may sometimes say “And I will cause harm to anyone who causes you harm,” or “I will punish anyone who punishes you.”

And by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves: Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation give different renderings of this sentence and place their alternative translations in their footnotes. The Revised Standard Version text understands the verb bless in a reflexive sense: bless themselves. Other translations interpret the form of the verb bless as passive. Either interpretation is possible. If the verb is taken as a reflexive, the sense is that the nations of the world will ask for blessings on themselves and each other just as the LORD blessed Abram, or as the Good News Translation note says, “All the nations will ask me to bless them as I have blessed you [Abram].” Interpreted as a passive, the meaning is as given in the Revised Standard Version footnote: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The passive use of bless may be expressed as an active construction by saying “through you I will bless all the nations” (Good News Translation). However, “through you” may require some adjustment in many languages by saying, for example, “The blessing I have given to you will become a blessing for all nations” or “Because you have received my blessing, all the nations of the world will also receive it.”

Whether the translator follows the one interpretation or the other, the sense seems to be the same, namely, that God’s action of blessing Abram is not limited to him and his descendants but has its goal in all peoples. Translations express this in various ways; for example, “I will use you to bless people in all other countries,” “By means of you I will do good to all groups of people…,” and “Through you I’m going to make all tribes in all countries really happy.”

All the families of the earth: the Hebrew term is often translated “family” as in Revised Standard Version. However, its basic meaning is “subdivision,” “category,” or “clan,” and so it generally refers to groups larger than the family group. Speiser translates “All the communities on earth,” while Revised English Bible and New International Version have “All [the] peoples on earth,” and Good News Translation “All the nations.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .