Joshua 3:12

3:12 Now select for yourselves twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one per tribe.

Numbers 1:4-15

1:4 And to help you ¹  there is to be a man from each ²  tribe, each man ³  the head ⁴  of his family. ⁵  1:5 Now these are the names of the men who are to help ⁶  you:

from ⁷  Reuben, Elizur son of Shedeur;

1:6 from Simeon, Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai; ⁸ 

1:7 from Judah, Nahshon ⁹  son of Amminadab;

1:8 from Issachar, Nethanel son of Zuar;

1:9 from Zebulun, Eliab son of Helon;

1:10 from the sons of Joseph:

from Ephraim, Elishama son of Ammihud;

from Manasseh, Gamaliel son of Pedahzur;

1:11 from Benjamin, Abidan son of Gideoni;

1:12 from Dan, Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai;

1:13 from Asher, Pagiel son of Ocran;

1:14 from Gad, Eliasaph son of Deuel; ¹⁰ 

1:15 from Naphtali, Ahira son of Enan.”

Numbers 13:2

13:2 “Send out men to investigate ¹¹  the land of Canaan, which I am giving ¹²  to the Israelites. You are to send one man from each ancestral tribe, ¹³  each one a leader among them.”

Numbers 34:18

34:18 You must take one leader from every ¹⁴  tribe to assist in allocating the land as an inheritance. ¹⁵ 

Deuteronomy 1:23

1:23 I thought this was a good idea, ¹⁶  so I sent ¹⁷  twelve men from among you, one from each tribe.

Deuteronomy 1:1

The Covenant Setting

1:1 This is what ¹⁸  Moses said to the assembly of Israel ¹⁹  in the Transjordanian ²⁰  wastelands, the arid country opposite ²¹  Suph, ²²  between ²³  Paran ²⁴  and Tophel, ²⁵  Laban, ²⁶  Hazeroth, ²⁷  and Di Zahab ²⁸ 

Deuteronomy 18:1

Provision for Priests and Levites

18:1 The Levitical priests ²⁹  – indeed, the entire tribe of Levi – will have no allotment or inheritance with Israel; they may eat the burnt offerings of the Lord and of his inheritance. ³⁰ 

Matthew 10:1-5

Sending Out the Twelve Apostles

10:1 Jesus ³¹  called his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits ³²  so they could cast them out and heal every kind of disease and sickness. ³³  10:2 Now these are the names of the twelve apostles: ³⁴  first, Simon ³⁵  (called Peter), and Andrew his brother; James son of Zebedee and John his brother; 10:3 Philip and Bartholomew; ³⁶  Thomas ³⁷  and Matthew the tax collector; ³⁸  James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; ³⁹  10:4 Simon the Zealot ⁴⁰  and Judas Iscariot, ⁴¹  who betrayed him. ⁴² 

10:5 Jesus sent out these twelve, instructing them as follows: ⁴³  “Do not go to Gentile regions ⁴⁴  and do not enter any Samaritan town. ⁴⁵ 

[1:4]  ¹ tn Heb “and with you.”

[1:4]  ² tn The construction uses the noun in a distributive sense: “a man, a man for a tribe,” meaning a man for each tribe.

[1:4]  ³ tn The clause expresses a distributive function, “a man” means “each man.”

[1:4]  ⁴ sn See J. R. Bartlett, “The Use of the Word ראשׁ as a Title in the Old Testament,” VT 19 (1969): 1-10.

[1:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “the house of his fathers.”

[1:5]  ⁶ tn The verb is עָמַד (’amad, “to stand”). It literally then is, “who will stand with you.” They will help in the count, but they will also serve as leaders as the camp moves from place to place.

[1:5]  ⁷ tn The preposition lamed (ל) prefixed to the name could be taken in the sense of “from,” but could also be “with regard to” (specification).

[1:6]  ⁸ sn This name and the name Ammishaddai below have the theophoric element (שַׁדַּי, shadday, “the Almighty”). It would mean “the Almighty is my rock”; the later name means “the Almighty is my kinsman.” Other theophoric elements in the passage are “father,” “brother,” and “God.”

[1:7]  ⁹ sn Nahshon was an ancestor of Boaz and David, and therefore of Christ (Luke 3:32-33).

[1:14]  ¹⁰ tc There is a textual difficulty with this verb. The Greek form uses r and not d, giving the name Ra‘oul. There is even some variation in the Hebrew traditions, but BHS (following the Leningrad codex of a.d. 1008) has preferred the name Deuel.

[13:2]  ¹¹ tn The imperfect tense with the conjunction is here subordinated to the preceding imperative to form the purpose clause. It can thus be translated “send…to investigate.”

[13:2]  ¹² tn The participle here should be given a future interpretation, meaning “which I am about to give” or “which I am going to give.”

[13:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “one man one man of the tribe of his fathers.”

[34:18]  ¹⁴ tn This sense is created by repetition: “one leader, one leader from the tribe.”

[34:18]  ¹⁵ tn The sentence simply uses לִנְחֹל (linkhol, “to divide, apportion”). It has been taken already to mean “allocate as an inheritance.” Here “assist” may be added since Joshua and Eleazar had the primary work.

[1:23]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the thing was good in my eyes.”

[1:23]  ¹⁷ tn Or “selected” (so NIV, NRSV, TEV); Heb “took.”

[1:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “These are the words.”

[1:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “to all Israel.”

[1:1]  ²⁰ tn Heb “on the other side of the Jordan.” This would appear to favor authorship by someone living on the west side of the Jordan, that is, in Canaan, whereas the biblical tradition locates Moses on the east side (cf. v. 5). However the Hebrew phrase בְּעֵבֶר הַיּרְדֵּן (bÿ’ever hayyrÿden) is a frozen form meaning “Transjordan,” a name appropriate from any geographical vantage point. To this day, one standing east of the Jordan can describe himself as being in Transjordan.

[1:1]  ²¹ tn The Hebrew term מוֹל (mol) may also mean “in front of” or “near” (cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[1:1]  ²² sn This place is otherwise unattested and its location is unknown. Perhaps it is Khirbet Sufah, 4 mi (6 km) SSE of Madaba, Jordan.

[1:1]  ²³ tn The Hebrew term בֵּין (ben) may suggest “in the area of.”

[1:1]  ²⁴ sn Paran is the well-known desert area between Mount Sinai and Kadesh Barnea (cf. Num 10:12; 12:16).

[1:1]  ²⁵ sn Tophel refers possibly to et£-T£afîleh, 15 mi (25 km) SE of the Dead Sea, or to Da‚bîlu, another name for Paran. See H. Cazelles, “Tophel (Deut. 1:1),” VT 9 (1959): 412-15.

[1:1]  ²⁶ sn Laban. Perhaps this refers to Libnah (Num 33:20).

[1:1]  ²⁷ sn Hazeroth. This probably refers to àAin Khadra. See Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible, 199-200.

[1:1]  ²⁸ sn Di Zahab. Perhaps this refers to Mina al-Dhahab on the eastern Sinai coast.

[18:1]  ²⁹ tn The MT places the terms “priests” and “Levites” in apposition, thus creating an epexegetical construction in which the second term qualifies the first, i.e., “Levitical priests.” This is a way of asserting their legitimacy as true priests. The Syriac renders “to the priest and to the Levite,” making a distinction between the two, but one that is out of place here.

[18:1]  ³⁰ sn Of his inheritance. This is a figurative way of speaking of the produce of the land the Lord will give to his people. It is the Lord’s inheritance, but the Levites are allowed to eat it since they themselves have no inheritance among the other tribes of Israel.

[10:1]  ³¹ tn Grk “And he.”

[10:1]  ³² sn Unclean spirits refers to evil spirits.

[10:1]  ³³ tn Grk “and every [kind of] sickness.” Here “every” was not repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[10:2]  ³⁴ sn The term apostles is rare in the gospels, found only here, Mark 3:14, and six more times in Luke (6:13; 9:10; 11:49; 17:5; 22:14; 24:10).

[10:2]  ³⁵ sn In the various lists of the twelve, Simon (that is, Peter) is always mentioned first (see also Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:13-16; Acts 1:13) and the first four are always the same, though not in the same order after Peter.

[10:3]  ³⁶ sn Bartholomew (meaning “son of Tolmai” in Aramaic) could be another name for Nathanael mentioned in John 1:45.

[10:3]  ³⁷ sn This is the “doubting Thomas” of John 20:24-29.

[10:3]  ³⁸ sn See the note on tax collectors in 5:46.

[10:3]  ³⁹ tc Witnesses differ on the identification of the last disciple mentioned in v. 3: He is called Λεββαῖος (Lebbaio", “Lebbaeus”) in D, Judas Zelotes in it, and not present in sy^s. The Byzantine text, along with a few others (C^[*^],2 L W Θ Ë¹ 33 Ï), conflates earlier readings by calling him “Lebbaeus, who was called Thaddaeus,” while codex 13 pc conflate by way of transposition (“Thaddaeus, who was called Lebbaeus”). But excellent witnesses of the earliest texttypes (א B ˹³ 892 pc lat co) call him merely Θαδδαῖος (Qaddaio", “Thaddaeus”), a reading which, because of this support, is most likely correct.

[10:4]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “the Cananean,” but according to both BDAG 507 s.v. Καναναῖος and L&N 11.88, this term has no relation at all to the geographical terms for Cana or Canaan, but is derived from the Aramaic term for “enthusiast, zealot” (see Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13), possibly because of an earlier affiliation with the party of the Zealots. He may not have been technically a member of the particular Jewish nationalistic party known as “Zealots” (since according to some scholars this party had not been organized at that time), but simply someone who was zealous for Jewish independence from Rome, in which case the term would refer to his temperament.

[10:4]  ⁴¹ sn There is some debate about what the name Iscariot means. It probably alludes to a region in Judea and thus might make Judas the only non-Galilean in the group. Several explanations for the name Iscariot have been proposed, but it is probably transliterated Hebrew with the meaning “man of Kerioth” (there are at least two villages that had that name). For further discussion see D. L. Bock, Luke (BECNT), 1:546; also D. A. Carson, John, 304.

[10:4]  ⁴² tn Grk “who even betrayed him.”

[10:5]  ⁴³ tn Grk “instructing them, saying.”

[10:5]  ⁴⁴ tn Grk “on the road of the Gentiles.” That is, a path that leads to Gentile regions.

[10:5]  ⁴⁵ tn Grk “town [or city] of the Samaritans.”