Exodus 32:2

32:2 So Aaron said to them, “Break off the gold earrings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ¹ 

Exodus 32:34-35

32:34 So now go, lead the people to the place I have spoken to you about. See, ²  my angel will go before you. But on the day that I punish, I will indeed punish them for their sin.” ³ 

32:35 And the Lord sent a plague on the people because they had made the calf ⁴  – the one Aaron made. ⁵ 

Numbers 11:33-34

11:33 But while the meat was still between their teeth, before they chewed it, ⁶  the anger of the Lord burned against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great plague.

11:34 So the name of that place was called Kibroth Hattaavah, ⁷  because there they buried the people that craved different food. ⁸ 

Numbers 14:20-34

14:20 Then the Lord said, “I have forgiven them as you asked. ⁹  14:21 But truly, as I live, ¹⁰  all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. 14:22 For all the people have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have tempted ¹¹  me now these ten times, ¹²  and have not obeyed me, ¹³  14:23 they will by no means ¹⁴  see the land that I swore to their fathers, nor will any of them who despised me see it. 14:24 Only my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit and has followed me fully – I will bring him into the land where he had gone, and his descendants ¹⁵  will possess it. 14:25 (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites were living in the valleys.) ¹⁶  Tomorrow, turn and journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.”

14:26 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: 14:27 “How long must I bear ¹⁷  with this evil congregation ¹⁸  that murmurs against me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites that they murmured against me. 14:28 Say to them, ‘As I live, ¹⁹  says ²⁰  the Lord, I will surely do to you just what you have spoken in my hearing. ²¹  14:29 Your dead bodies ²²  will fall in this wilderness – all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me. 14:30 You will by no means enter into the land where ²³  I swore ²⁴  to settle ²⁵  you. The only exceptions are Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 14:31 But I will bring in your little ones, whom you said would become victims of war, ²⁶  and they will enjoy ²⁷  the land that you have despised. 14:32 But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, 14:33 and your children will wander ²⁸  in the wilderness forty years and suffer for your unfaithfulness, ²⁹  until your dead bodies lie finished ³⁰  in the wilderness. 14:34 According to the number of the days you have investigated this land, forty days – one day for a year – you will suffer for ³¹  your iniquities, forty years, and you will know what it means to thwart me. ³² 

Numbers 20:12

The Lord’s Judgment

20:12 Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust me enough ³³  to show me as holy ³⁴  before ³⁵  the Israelites, therefore you will not bring this community into the land I have given them.” ³⁶ 

Numbers 20:24

20:24 “Aaron will be gathered to his ancestors, ³⁷  for he will not enter into the land I have given to the Israelites because both of you ³⁸  rebelled against my word ³⁹  at the waters of Meribah.

Deuteronomy 3:26

3:26 But the Lord was angry at me because of you and would not listen to me. Instead, he ⁴⁰  said to me, “Enough of that! ⁴¹  Do not speak to me anymore about this matter.

Deuteronomy 9:20

9:20 The Lord was also angry enough at Aaron to kill him, but at that time I prayed for him ⁴²  too.

[32:2]  ¹ sn B. Jacob (Exodus, 937-38) argues that Aaron simply did not have the resolution that Moses did, and wanting to keep peace he gave in to the crowd. He also tries to explain that Aaron was wanting to show their folly through the deed. U. Cassuto also says that Aaron’s request for the gold was a form of procrastination, but that the people quickly did it and so he had no alternative but to go through with it (Exodus, 412). These may be right, since Aaron fully understood what was wrong with this, and what the program was all about. The text gives no strong indication to support these ideas, but there are enough hints from the way Aaron does things to warrant such a conclusion.

[32:34]  ² tn Heb “behold, look.” Moses should take this fact into consideration.

[32:34]  ³ sn The Law said that God would not clear the guilty. But here the punishment is postponed to some future date when he would revisit this matter. Others have taken the line to mean that whenever a reckoning was considered necessary, then this sin would be included (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 957). The repetition of the verb traditionally rendered “visit” in both clauses puts emphasis on the certainty – so “indeed.”

[32:35]  ⁴ tn The verse is difficult because of the double reference to the making of the calf. The NJPS’s translation tries to reconcile the two by reading “for what they did with the calf that Aaron had made.” B. S. Childs (Exodus [OTL], 557) explains in some detail why this is not a good translation based on syntactical grounds; he opts for the conclusion that the last three words are a clumsy secondary addition. It seems preferable to take the view that both are true, Aaron is singled out for his obvious lead in the sin, but the people sinned by instigating the whole thing.

[32:35]  ⁵ sn Most commentators have difficulty with this verse. W. C. Kaiser says the strict chronology is not always kept, and so the plague here may very well refer to the killing of the three thousand (“Exodus,” EBC 2:481).

[11:33]  ⁶ tn The verb is a prefixed conjugation, normally an imperfect tense. But coming after the adverb טֶּרֶם (terem) it is treated as a preterite.

[11:34]  ⁷ sn The name “the graves of the ones who craved” is again explained by a wordplay, a popular etymology. In Hebrew קִבְרוֹת הַתַּאֲוָה (qivrot hatta’avah) is the technical name. It is the place that the people craved the meat, longing for the meat of Egypt, and basically rebelled against God. The naming marks another station in the wilderness where the people failed to accept God’s good gifts with grace and to pray for their other needs to be met.

[11:34]  ⁸ tn The words “different food” are implied, and are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[14:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “forgiven according to your word.” The direct object, “them,” is implied.

[14:21]  ¹⁰ sn This is the oath formula, but in the Pentateuch it occurs here and in v. 28.

[14:22]  ¹¹ tn The verb נָסָה (nasah) means “to test, to tempt, to prove.” It can be used to indicate things are tried or proven, or for testing in a good sense, or tempting in the bad sense, i.e., putting God to the test. In all uses there is uncertainty or doubt about the outcome. Some uses of the verb are positive: If God tests Abraham in Genesis 22:1, it is because there is uncertainty whether he fears the Lord or not; if people like Gideon put out the fleece and test the Lord, it is done by faith but in order to be certain of the Lord’s presence. But here, when these people put God to the test ten times, it was because they doubted the goodness and ability of God, and this was a major weakness. They had proof to the contrary, but chose to challenge God.

[14:22]  ¹² tn “Ten” is here a round figure, emphasizing the complete testing. But see F. V. Winnett, The Mosaic Tradition, 121-54.

[14:22]  ¹³ tn Heb “listened to my voice.”

[14:23]  ¹⁴ tn The word אִם (’im) indicates a negative oath formula: “if” means “they will not.” It is elliptical. In a human oath one would be saying: “The Lord do to me if they see…,” meaning “they will by no means see.” Here God is swearing that they will not see the land.

[14:24]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “seed.”

[14:25]  ¹⁶ sn The judgment on Israel is that they turn back to the desert and not attack the tribes in the land. So a parenthetical clause is inserted to state who was living there. They would surely block the entrance to the land from the south – unless God removed them. And he is not going to do that for Israel.

[14:27]  ¹⁷ tn The figure is aposiopesis, or sudden silence. The main verb is deleted from the line, “how long…this evil community.” The intensity of the emotion is the reason for the ellipsis.

[14:27]  ¹⁸ sn It is worth mentioning in passing that this is one of the Rabbinic proof texts for having at least ten men to form a congregation and have prayer. If God called ten men (the bad spies) a “congregation,” then a congregation must have ten men. But here the word “community/congregation” refers in this context to the people of Israel as a whole, not just to the ten spies.

[14:28]  ¹⁹ sn Here again is the oath that God swore in his wrath, an oath he swore by himself, that they would not enter the land. “As the Lord lives,” or “by the life of the Lord,” are ways to render it.

[14:28]  ²⁰ tn The word נְאֻם (nÿ’um) is an “oracle.” It is followed by the subjective genitive: “the oracle of the Lord” is equal to saying “the Lord says.”

[14:28]  ²¹ tn Heb “in my ears.”

[14:29]  ²² tn Or “your corpses” (also in vv. 32, 33).

[14:30]  ²³ tn The relative pronoun “which” is joined with the resumptive pronoun “in it” to form a smoother reading “where.”

[14:30]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew text uses the anthropomorphic expression “I raised my hand” in taking an oath.

[14:30]  ²⁵ tn Heb “to cause you to dwell; to cause you to settle.”

[14:31]  ²⁶ tn Or “plunder.”

[14:31]  ²⁷ tn Heb “know.”

[14:33]  ²⁸ tn The word is “shepherds.” It means that the people would be wilderness nomads, grazing their flock on available land.

[14:33]  ²⁹ tn Heb “you shall bear your whoredoms.” The imagery of prostitution is used throughout the Bible to reflect spiritual unfaithfulness, leaving the covenant relationship and following after false gods. Here it is used generally for their rebellion in the wilderness, but not for following other gods.

[14:33]  ³⁰ tn The infinitive is from תָּמַם (tamam), which means “to be complete.” The word is often used to express completeness in a good sense – whole, blameless, or the like. Here and in v. 35 it seems to mean “until your deaths have been completed.” See also Gen 47:15; Deut 2:15.

[14:34]  ³¹ tn Heb “you shall bear.”

[14:34]  ³² tn The phrase refers to the consequences of open hostility to God, or perhaps abandonment of God. The noun תְּנוּאָה (tÿnu’ah) occurs in Job 33:10 (perhaps). The related verb occurs in Num 30:6 HT (30:5 ET) and 32:7 with the sense of “disallow, discourage.” The sense of the expression adopted in this translation comes from the meticulous study of R. Loewe, “Divine Frustration Exegetically Frustrated,” Words and Meanings, 137-58.

[20:12]  ³³ tn Or “to sanctify me.”

[20:12]  ³⁴ sn Using the basic meaning of the word קָדַשׁ (qadash, “to be separate, distinct, set apart”), we can understand better what Moses failed to do. He was supposed to have acted in a way that would have shown God to be distinct, different, holy. Instead, he gave the impression that God was capricious and hostile – very human. The leader has to be aware of what image he is conveying to the people.

[20:12]  ³⁵ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[20:12]  ³⁶ tn There is debate as to exactly what the sin of Moses was. Some interpreters think that the real sin might have been that he refused to do this at first, but that fact has been suppressed from the text. Some think the text was deliberately vague to explain why they could not enter the land without demeaning them. Others simply, and more likely, note that in Moses there was unbelief, pride, anger, impatience – disobedience.

[20:24]  ³⁷ sn This is the standard poetic expression for death. The bones would be buried, often with the bones of relatives in the same tomb, giving rise to the expression.

[20:24]  ³⁸ tn The verb is in the second person plural form, and so it is Moses and Aaron who rebelled, and so now because of that Aaron first and then Moses would die without going into the land.

[20:24]  ³⁹ tn Heb “mouth.”

[3:26]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “the Lord.” For stylistic reasons the pronoun (“he”) has been used in the translation here.

[3:26]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “much to you” (an idiom).

[9:20]  ⁴² tn Heb “Aaron.” The pronoun is used in the translation to avoid redundancy.