Numbers 3:12

3:12 “Look, ¹  I myself have taken the Levites from among the Israelites instead of ²  every firstborn who opens the womb among the Israelites. So the Levites belong to me,

Numbers 5:20

5:20 But if you ³  have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had sexual relations with you….” ⁴ 

Numbers 22:27

22:27 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she crouched down under Balaam. Then Balaam was angry, and he beat his donkey with a staff.

Numbers 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, ⁵  and has made atonement ⁶  for the Israelites.’”

Numbers 32:14

32:14 Now look, you are standing in your fathers’ place, a brood of sinners, to increase still further the fierce wrath of the Lord against the Israelites.

¹ tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) here carries its deictic force, calling attention to the fact that is being declared. It is underscoring the fact that the Lord himself chose Levi.

² tn Literally “in the place of.”

³ tn The pronoun is emphatic – “but you, if you have gone astray.”

⁴ tn This is an example of the rhetorical device known as aposiopesis, or “sudden silence.” The sentence is broken off due to the intensity or emphasis of the moment. The reader is left to conclude what the sentence would have said.

⁵ tn The motif is reiterated here. Phinehas was passionately determined to maintain the rights of his God by stopping the gross sinful perversions.

⁶ 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.