Is not the whole land before you?: although the Canaanites and Perizzites lived in their towns in the country, the open land was available and could be occupied freely. Revised Standard Version correctly interprets the Hebrew as a question. However, the question is rhetorical, and in some languages a reply may be in order: “Of course it is.” The sense of the question is an emphatic statement, “The whole land is available to you,” that is, “All the land you can see can be occupied.” Good News Translation says “Choose any part of the land you want.”
Separate yourself from me is less abrupt in Hebrew, which contains the same particle used at the beginning of verse 8, which King James Version translates “Separate yourself, I pray thee, from me.” Biblia Dios Habla Hoy says “Please separate yourself from me.” Separate here means to go away from each other, and so New Jerusalem Bible translates “Go in the opposite direction to me.”
Abram goes on to say clearly what he means by Separate: If you take the left hand, than I will go to the right. The words translated left and right also mean “north” and “south” respectively. If someone faces east, then north is on the left hand and south is to the right. Accordingly it is possible to translate left as “north” and right as “south,” as do Revised English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, Bible en français courant, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy. In some languages it may be necessary to make clear that the sense is “if you take the land to the left [north] ….” It is also possible to take left and right as referring generally to different or opposite directions: “You go one way, and I’ll go the other” (Good News Translation). One translation renders the whole verse this way: “We-two had better separate. The whole land is here. You choose the part you want, and I will take another part.”
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 .