But will go to my country: even if the text is not restructured as suggested above, translators may find it best to begin a new sentence with Gen 24.4. “I want you to go back to my country.” My country means “my country of origin,” “the country in which I was raised.”

To my kindred: that is, “to my relatives.” Some translations fill this out to “my relatives who are still living there.”

In 12.1 the LORD told Abraham “Go from your country and your kindred….” In 12.4 Abraham departed from Haran. So the instruction to the servant is to return to the area of Haran in northern Mesopotamia.

And take a wife for my son Isaac expresses positively what was said negatively in the previous verse. A number of actions are included in take a wife for, and in some languages these must be mentioned separately; for example, “find a woman … and bring her back so that she can be married to my son.” In some translations choosing the wife is linked more closely with going back to Abraham’s relatives, by saying “choose the daughter of one of them for my son to marry.”

A model of the way verses 3b-4 may need to be rearranged in translation is as follows:

• Here is the promise I want you to make. You must find a wife for my son Isaac. But you must not find his wife in this country of Canaan. No! You have to go back to my own country, and from my own countrymen you must get a wife for my son.

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 .