Numbers 31:20

31:20 You must purify each garment and everything that is made of skin, everything made of goat’s hair, and everything made of wood.” ¹ 

Numbers 31:51

31:51 Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold from them, all of it in the form of ornaments.

Numbers 16:28

16:28 Then Moses said, “This is how ²  you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own will. ³ 

Numbers 8:4

8:4 This is how the lampstand was made: ⁴  It was beaten work in gold; ⁵  from its shaft to its flowers it was beaten work. According to the pattern which the Lord had shown Moses, so he made the lampstand.

¹ sn These verses are a reminder that taking a life, even if justified through holy war, still separates one from the holiness of God. It is part of the violation of the fallen world, and only through the ritual of purification can one be once again made fit for the presence of the Lord.

² tn Heb “in this.”

³ 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.

³ tn The Hebrew text literally has “and this is the work of the lampstand,” but that rendering does not convey the sense that it is describing how it was made.

⁴ sn The idea is that it was all hammered from a single plate of gold.