Bilangan 14:29-30

14:29 Your dead bodies ¹  will fall in this wilderness – all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me. 14:30 You will by no means enter into the land where ²  I swore ³  to settle ⁴  you. The only exceptions are Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

Bilangan 15:31

15:31 Because he has despised ⁵  the word of the Lord and has broken ⁶  his commandment, that person ⁷  must be completely cut off. ⁸  His iniquity will be on him.’” ⁹ 

Bilangan 22:29

22:29 And Balaam said to the donkey, “You have made me look stupid; I wish ¹⁰  there were a sword in my hand, for I would kill you right now.”

Bilangan 23:17

23:17 When Balaam ¹¹  came to him, he was still standing by his burnt offering, along with the princes of Moab. And Balak said to him, “What has the Lord spoken?”

Bilangan 23:27

23:27 Balak said to Balaam, “Come, please; I will take you to another place. Perhaps it will please God ¹²  to let you curse them for me from there.” ¹³ 

Bilangan 25:13

25:13 So it will be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of a permanent priesthood, because he has been zealous for his God, ¹⁴  and has made atonement ¹⁵  for the Israelites.’”

Bilangan 26:10

26:10 The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and Korah at the time that company died, when the fire consumed 250 men. So they became a warning.

Bilangan 33:40

33:40 The king of Arad, the Canaanite king who lived in the south of the land of Canaan, heard about the approach of the Israelites.

[14:29]  ¹ tn Or “your corpses” (also in vv. 32, 33).

[14:30]  ² tn The relative pronoun “which” is joined with the resumptive pronoun “in it” to form a smoother reading “where.”

[14:30]  ³ tn The Hebrew text uses the anthropomorphic expression “I raised my hand” in taking an oath.

[14:30]  ⁴ tn Heb “to cause you to dwell; to cause you to settle.”

[15:31]  ⁵ tn The verb בָּזָה (bazah, “to despise”) means to treat something as worthless, to treat it with contempt, to look down the nose at something as it were.

[15:31]  ⁶ tn The verb פָּרַר (parar, “to break”) can mean to nullify, break, or violate a covenant.

[15:31]  ⁷ tn Heb “soul.”

[15:31]  ⁸ tn The construction uses the Niphal imperfect with the modifying Niphal infinitive absolute. The infinitive makes the sentence more emphatic. If the imperfect tense is taken as an instruction imperfect, then the infinitive makes the instruction more binding. If it is a simple future, then the future is certain. In either case, there is no exclusion from being cut off.

[15:31]  ⁹ sn The point is that the person’s iniquity remains with him – he must pay for his sin. The judgment of God in such a case is both appropriate and unavoidable.

[22:29]  ¹⁰ tn The optative clause is introduced with the particle לוּ (lu).

[23:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Balaam) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[23:27]  ¹² tn Heb “be pleasing in the eyes of God.”

[23:27]  ¹³ sn Balak is stubborn, as indeed Balaam is persistent. But Balak still thinks that if another location were used it just might work. Balaam had actually told Balak in the prophecy that other attempts would fail. But Balak refuses to give up so easily. So he insists they perform the ritual and try again. This time, however, Balaam will change his approach, and this will result in a dramatic outpouring of power on him.

[25:13]  ¹⁴ tn The motif is reiterated here. Phinehas was passionately determined to maintain the rights of his God by stopping the gross sinful perversions.

[25:13]  ¹⁵ sn The atonement that he made in this passage refers to the killing of the two obviously blatant sinners. By doing this he dispensed with any animal sacrifice, for the sinners themselves died. In Leviticus it was the life of the substitutionary animal that was taken in place of the sinners that made atonement. The point is that sin was punished by death, and so God was free to end the plague and pardon the people. God’s holiness and righteousness have always been every bit as important as God’s mercy and compassion, for without righteousness and holiness mercy and compassion mean nothing.