Bilangan 5:10

5:10 Every man’s holy things ¹  will be his; whatever any man gives the priest will be his.’”

Bilangan 6:6

6:6 “‘All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he must not contact ²  a dead body. ³ 

Bilangan 7:9

7:9 But to the Kohathites he gave none, because the service of the holy things, which they carried ⁴  on their shoulders, was their responsibility. ⁵ 

Bilangan 8:14

8:14 And so ⁶  you are to separate the Levites from among the Israelites, and the Levites will be mine.

Bilangan 12:12

12:12 Do not let her be like a baby born dead, whose flesh is half-consumed when it comes out of its ⁷  mother’s womb!”

Bilangan 21:28

21:28 For fire went out from Heshbon,

a flame from the city of Sihon.

It has consumed Ar of Moab

and the lords ⁸  of the high places of Arnon.

Bilangan 30:13

30:13 “Any vow or sworn obligation that would bring affliction to her, ⁹  her husband can confirm or nullify. ¹⁰ 

Bilangan 30:15

30:15 But if he should nullify them after he has heard them, then he will bear her iniquity.” ¹¹ 

Bilangan 36:12

36:12 They were married into the families of the Manassehites, the descendants of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of their father’s family.

[5:10]  ¹ sn The “holy gifts” are described with the root of קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh) to convey that they were separate. Such things had been taken out of the ordinary and normal activities of life.

[6:6]  ² tn The Hebrew verb is simply “enter, go,” no doubt with the sense of go near.

[6:6]  ³ tn The Hebrew has נֶפֶשׁ מֵת (nefesh met), literally a “dead person.” But since the word נֶפֶשׁ can also be used for animals, the restriction would be for any kind of corpse. Death was very much a part of the fallen world, and so for one so committed to the Lord, avoiding all such contamination would be a witness to the greatest separation, even in a family.

[7:9]  ⁴ tn The verb is the imperfect tense, but it describes their customary activity – they had to carry, they used to carry.

[7:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “upon them,” meaning “their duty.”

[8:14]  ⁶ tn The vav (ו) consecutive on the perfect tense not only carries the nuance of instruction forward to this clause, but also marks this clause out as a summary of what has taken place, i.e., by doing all this ritual Moses will have separated the Levites from the people for God’s own possession.

[12:12]  ⁷ tc The words “its mother” and “its flesh” are among the so-called tiqqune sopherim, or “emendations of the scribes.” According to this tradition the text originally had here “our mother” and “our flesh,” but the ancient scribes changed these pronouns from the first person to the third person. Apparently they were concerned that the image of Moses’ mother giving birth to a baby with physical defects of the sort described here was somehow inappropriate, given the stature and importance of Moses.

[21:28]  ⁸ tc Some scholars emend to בָּלְעָה (bal’ah), reading “and devoured,” instead of בַּעֲלֵי (ba’aley, “its lords”); cf. NAB, NRSV, TEV. This emendation is closer to the Greek and makes a better parallelism, but the MT makes good sense as it stands.

[30:13]  ⁹ tn The sentence uses the infinitive construct לְעַנֹּת (lÿ’annot, “to afflict”), which is the same word used in the instructions for the day of atonement in which people are to afflict themselves (their souls). The case here may be that the woman would take a religious vow on such an occasion to humble herself, to mortify her flesh, to abstain from certain things, perhaps even sexual relations within marriage.

[30:13]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “or her husband can nullify.”

[30:15]  ¹¹ sn In other words, he will pay the penalty for making her break her vows if he makes her stop what she vowed. It will not be her responsibility.