Bilangan 16:28

16:28 Then Moses said, “This is how ¹  you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own will. ² 

Bilangan 20:14

Rejection by the Edomites

20:14 ³ Moses ⁴  sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom: ⁵  “Thus says your brother Israel: ‘You know all the hardships we have experienced, ⁶ 

[16:28]  ¹ tn Heb “in this.”

[16:28]  ² tn The Hebrew text simply has כִּי־לֹא מִלִּבִּי (ki-lo’ millibbi, “for not from my heart”). The heart is the center of the will, the place decisions are made (see H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament). Moses is saying that the things he has done have not come “from the will of man” so to speak – and certainly not from some secret desire on his part to seize power.

[20:14]  ³ sn For this particular section, see W. F. Albright, “From the Patriarchs to Moses: 2. Moses out of Egypt,” BA 36 (1973): 57-58; J. R. Bartlett, “The Land of Seir and the Brotherhood of Edom,” JTS 20 (1969): 1-20, and “The Rise and Fall of the Kingdom of Edom,” PEQ 104 (1972): 22-37, and “The Brotherhood of Edom,” JSOT 4 (1977): 2-7.

[20:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “And Moses sent.”

[20:14]  ⁵ sn Some modern biblical scholars are convinced, largely through arguments from silence, that there were no unified kingdoms in Edom until the 9th century, and no settlements there before the 12th century, and so the story must be late and largely fabricated. The evidence is beginning to point to the contrary. But the cities and residents of the region would largely be Bedouin, and so leave no real remains.

[20:14]  ⁶ tn Heb “found.”