14:1 10 Then all the community raised a loud cry, 11 and the people wept 12 that night. 14:2 And all the Israelites murmured 13 against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died 14 in the land of Egypt, or if only we had perished 15 in this wilderness! 14:3 Why has the Lord brought us into this land only to be killed by the sword, that our wives and our children should become plunder? Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?”
32:1 19 Now the Reubenites and the Gadites possessed a very large number of cattle. When they saw that the lands of Jazer and Gilead were ideal for cattle, 20
1:1 From Paul, 21 an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
1 tn The vav (ו) disjunctive on the noun at the beginning of the clause forms a strong adversative clause here.
2 tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.
3 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.
4 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.
5 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.
6 tn Heb “in its midst.”
7 tc The Greek version uses gigantes (“giants”) to translate “the Nephilim,” but it does not retain the clause “the sons of Anak are from the Nephilim.”
8 tn Heb “in our eyes.”
9 tn Heb “in their eyes.”
10 sn This chapter forms part of the story already begun. There are three major sections here: dissatisfaction with the reports (vv. 1-10), the threat of divine punishment (vv. 11-38), and the defeat of the Israelites (vv. 39-45). See K. D. Sakenfeld, “The Problem of Divine Forgiveness in Num 14,” CBQ 37 (1975): 317-30; also J. R. Bartlett, “The Use of the Word רֹאשׁ as a Title in the Old Testament,” VT 19 (1969): 1-10.
11 tn The two verbs “lifted up their voice and cried” form a hendiadys; the idiom of raising the voice means that they cried aloud.
12 tn There are a number of things that the verb “to weep” or “wail” can connote. It could reflect joy, grief, lamentation, or repentance, but here it reflects fear, hopelessness, or vexation at the thought of coming all this way and being defeated by the Canaanite armies. See Judg 20:23, 26.
13 tn The Hebrew verb “to murmur” is לוּן (lun). It is a strong word, signifying far more than complaining or grumbling, as some of the modern translations have it. The word is most often connected to the wilderness experience. It is paralleled in the literature with the word “to rebel.” The murmuring is like a parliamentary vote of no confidence, for they no longer trusted their leaders and wished to choose a new leader and return. This “return to Egypt” becomes a symbol of their lack of faith in the
14 tn The optative is expressed by לוּ (lu) and then the verb, here the perfect tense מַתְנוּ (matnu) – “O that we had died….” Had they wanted to die in Egypt they should not have cried out to the
15 tn Heb “died.”
16 tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated to the parallel yet chronologically later verb in the next clause.
17 tn The infinitive construct here with lamed (ל) is functioning as a result clause.
18 tn The
19 sn While the tribes are on the other side of Jordan, the matter of which tribes would settle there has to be discussed. This chapter begins the settlement of Israel into the tribal territories, something to be continued in Joshua. The chapter has the petitions (vv. 1-5), the response by Moses (vv. 6-15), the proposal (vv. 16-27), and the conclusion of the matter (vv. 28-42). For literature on this subject, both critical and conservative, see S. E. Loewenstein, “The Relation of the Settlement of Gad and Reuben in Numbers 32:1-38, Its Background and Its Composition,” Tarbiz 42 (1972): 12-26; J. Mauchline, “Gilead and Gilgal, Some Reflections on the Israelite Occupation of Palestine,” VT 6 (1956): 19-33; and A. Bergmann, “The Israelite Tribe of Half-Manasseh,” JPOS 16 (1936): 224-54.
20 tn Heb “the place was a place of/for cattle.”
21 tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.