Bilangan 34:7

The Northern Border of the Land

34:7 “‘And this will be your northern border: From the Great Sea you will draw a line to Mount Hor;

Bilangan 34:9

34:9 The border will continue to Ziphron, and its direction will be to Hazar Enan. This will be your northern border.

Bilangan 33:7

33:7 They traveled from Etham, and turned again to Pi-hahiroth, which is before Baal-Zephon; and they camped before Migdal.

Bilangan 35:5

35:5 “You must measure ¹  from outside the wall of the town on the east 1,000 yards, ²  and on the south side 1,000 yards, and on the west side 1,000 yards, and on the north side 1,000 yards, with the town in the middle. ³  This territory must belong to them as grazing land for the towns.

[35:5]  ¹ tn The verb is the Qal perfect of מָדַד (madad, “to measure”). With its vav (ו) consecutive it carries the same instructional force as the imperfect.

[35:5]  ² tn Heb “two thousand cubits” (also three more times in this verse). This would be a distance of 3,000 feet or 1,000 yards (1,350 meters).

[35:5]  ³ sn The precise nature of the layout described here is not altogether clear. V. 4 speaks of the distance from the wall as being 500 yards; v. 5, however, describes measurements of 1,000 yards. Various proposals have been made in order to harmonize vv. 4 and 5. P. J. Budd, Numbers (WBC), 376, makes the following suggestion: “It may be best to assume that the cubits of the Levitical pasture lands are cubit frontages of land – in other words on each side of the city there was a block of land with a frontage of two thousand cubits (v 5), and a depth of 1000 cubits (v 4).”