Bilangan 1:50

1:50 But appoint ¹  the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, ²  over all its furnishings and over everything in it. They must carry ³  the tabernacle and all its furnishings; and they ⁴  must attend to it and camp around it. ⁵ 

Bilangan 3:40

The Substitution for the Firstborn

3:40 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Number all the firstborn males of the Israelites from a month old and upward, and take ⁶  the number of their names.

Bilangan 5:18

5:18 Then the priest will have the woman stand before the Lord, uncover the woman’s head, and put the grain offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of suspicion. The priest will hold in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. ⁷ 

Bilangan 6:19

6:19 And the priest must take the boiled shoulder of the ram, one cake made without yeast from the basket, and one wafer made without yeast, and put them on the hands of the Nazirite after he has shaved his consecrated head; ⁸ 

Bilangan 12:14

12:14 The Lord said to Moses, “If her father had only spit ⁹  in her face, would she not have been disgraced for seven days? Shut her out from the camp seven days, and afterward she can be brought back in again.”

Bilangan 13:3

13:3 So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command ¹⁰  of the Lord. All of them were leaders ¹¹  of the Israelites.

Bilangan 13:32

13:32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging ¹²  report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through ¹³  to investigate is a land that devours ¹⁴  its inhabitants. ¹⁵  All the people we saw there ¹⁶  are of great stature.

Bilangan 18:19

18:19 All the raised offerings of the holy things that the Israelites offer to the Lord, I have given to you, and to your sons and daughters with you, as a perpetual ordinance. It is a covenant of salt ¹⁷  forever before the Lord for you and for your descendants with you.”

Bilangan 25:18

25:18 because they bring trouble to you by their treachery with which they have deceived ¹⁸  you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, ¹⁹  their sister, who was killed on the day of the plague that happened as a result of Peor.”

[1:50]  ¹ tn The same verb translated “number” (פָּקַד, paqad) is now used to mean “appoint” (הַפְקֵד, hafqed), which focuses more on the purpose of the verbal action of numbering people. Here the idea is that the Levites were appointed to take care of the tabernacle. On the use of this verb with the Levites’ appointment, see M. Gertner, “The Masorah and the Levites,” VT 10 (1960): 252.

[1:50]  ² tn The Hebrew name used here is מִשְׁכַּן הָעֵדֻת (mishkan ha’edut). The tabernacle or dwelling place of the Lord was given this name because it was here that the tablets of the Law were kept. The whole shrine was therefore a reminder (הָעֵדוּת, a “warning sign” or “testimony”) of the stipulations of the covenant. For the ancient Near Eastern customs of storing the code in the sanctuaries, see M. G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King, 14-19, and idem, The Structure of Biblical Authority, 35-36. Other items were in the ark in the beginning, but by the days of Solomon only the tablets were there (1 Kgs 8:9).

[1:50]  ³ tn The imperfect tense here is an obligatory imperfect telling that they are bound to do this since they are appointed for this specific task.

[1:50]  ⁴ tn The addition of the pronoun before the verb is emphatic – they are the ones who are to attend to the tabernacle. The verb used is שָׁרַת (sharat) in the Piel, indicating that they are to serve, minister to, attend to all the details about this shrine.

[1:50]  ⁵ tn Heb “the tabernacle.” The pronoun (“it”) was used in the translation here for stylistic reasons.

[3:40]  ⁶ tn The verb נָשָׂא (nasa’, “take”) has here the sense of collect, take a census, or register the names.

[5:18]  ⁷ tn The expression has been challenged. The first part, “bitter water,” has been thought to mean “water of contention” (so NEB), but this is not convincing. It has some support in the versions which read “contention” and “testing,” no doubt trying to fit the passage better. N. H. Snaith (Leviticus and Numbers [NCB], 129) suggests from an Arabic word that it was designed to cause an abortion – but that would raise an entirely different question, one of who the father of a child was. And that has not been introduced here. The water was “bitter” in view of the consequences it held for her if she was proven to be guilty. That is then enforced by the wordplay with the last word, the Piel participle הַמְאָרֲרִים (ham’ararim). The bitter water, if it convicted her, would pronounce a curse on her. So she was literally holding her life in her hands.

[5:18]  sn This ancient ritual seems to have functioned like a lie detector test, with all the stress and tension involved. It can be compared to water tests in the pagan world, with the exception that in Israel it was stacked more toward an innocent verdict. It seems to have been a temporary provision, for this is the only place that it appears, and no provision is made for its use later. It may have served as a didactic force, warning more than actually legislating. No provision is made in it for a similar charge to be brought against the man, but in the case of the suspicion of the woman the man would be very hesitant to demand this test given the harshness on false witnessing in Israel. The passage remains a rather strange section of the Law.

[6:19]  ⁸ tn The line does not include the word “head”; it literally has “after the consecrating of himself his consecrated [head].” The infinitive construct is here functioning in the temporal clause with the suffix as the subject and the object following.

[12:14]  ⁹ tn The form is intensified by the infinitive absolute, but here the infinitive strengthens not simply the verbal idea but the conditional cause construction as well.

[13:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “mouth.”

[13:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “heads.”

[13:32]  ¹² tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.

[13:32]  ¹³ tn Heb “which we passed over in it”; the pronoun on the preposition serves as a resumptive pronoun for the relative, and need not be translated literally.

[13:32]  ¹⁴ tn The verb is the feminine singular participle from אָכַל (’akhal); it modifies the land as a “devouring land,” a bold figure for the difficulty of living in the place.

[13:32]  ¹⁵ sn The expression has been interpreted in a number of ways by commentators, such as that the land was infertile, that the Canaanites were cannibals, that it was a land filled with warlike dissensions, or that it denotes a land geared for battle. It may be that they intended the land to seem infertile and insecure.

[13:32]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “in its midst.”

[18:19]  ¹⁷ sn Salt was used in all the offerings; its importance as a preservative made it a natural symbol for the covenant which was established by sacrifice. Even general agreements were attested by sacrifice, and the phrase “covenant of salt” speaks of such agreements as binding and irrevocable. Note the expression in Ezra 4:14, “we have been salted with the salt of the palace.” See further J. F. Ross, IDB 4:167.

[25:18]  ¹⁸ tn This is the same word as that translated “treachery.”

[25:18]  ¹⁹ sn Cozbi’s father, Zur, was one of five Midianite kings who eventually succumbed to Israel (Num 31:8). When the text gives the name and family of a woman, it is asserting that she is important, at least for social reasons, among her people.