Numbers 14:41

14:41 But Moses said, “Why ¹  are you now transgressing the commandment ²  of the Lord? It will not succeed!

Numbers 14:1

The Israelites Respond in Unbelief

14:1 ³ Then all the community raised a loud cry, ⁴  and the people wept ⁵  that night.

Numbers 13:13-14

13:13 from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael; 13:14 from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vopshi;

Numbers 13:2

13:2 “Send out men to investigate ⁶  the land of Canaan, which I am giving ⁷  to the Israelites. You are to send one man from each ancestral tribe, ⁸  each one a leader among them.”

Numbers 12:9-10

12:9 The anger of the Lord burned against them, and he departed. 12:10 When ⁹  the cloud departed from above the tent, Miriam became ¹⁰  leprous ¹¹  as snow. Then Aaron looked at ¹²  Miriam, and she was leprous!

Zechariah 7:11-14

7:11 “But they refused to pay attention, turning away stubbornly and stopping their ears so they could not hear. 7:12 Indeed, they made their heart as hard as diamond, ¹³  so that they could not obey the Torah and the other words the Lord who rules over all had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore, the Lord who rules over all had poured out great wrath.

7:13 “‘It then came about that just as I ¹⁴  cried out, but they would not obey, so they will cry out, but I will not listen,’ the Lord Lord who rules over all had said. 7:14 ‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ¹⁵  land a waste.”

[14:41]  ¹ tn The line literally has, “Why is this [that] you are transgressing….” The demonstrative pronoun is enclitic; it brings the force of “why in the world are you doing this now?”

[14:41]  ² tn Heb “mouth.”

[14:1]  ³ 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.

[14:1]  ⁴ tn The two verbs “lifted up their voice and cried” form a hendiadys; the idiom of raising the voice means that they cried aloud.

[14:1]  ⁵ 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.

[13:2]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ tn Heb “one man one man of the tribe of his fathers.”

[12:10]  ⁹ tn The disjunctive vav (ו) is here introducing a circumstantial clause of time.

[12:10]  ¹⁰ tn There is no verb “became” in this line. The second half of the line is introduced with the particle הִנֵה (hinneh, “look, behold”) in its archaic sense. This deictic use is intended to make the reader focus on Miriam as well.

[12:10]  ¹¹ sn The word “leprosy” and “leprous” covers a wide variety of skin diseases, and need not be limited to the actual disease of leprosy known today as Hansen’s disease. The description of it here has to do with snow, either the whiteness or the wetness. If that is the case then there would be open wounds and sores – like Job’s illness (see M. Noth, Numbers [OTL], 95-96).

[12:10]  ¹² tn Heb “turned to.”

[7:12]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew term שָׁמִיר (shamir) means literally “hardness” and since it is said in Ezek 3:9 to be harder than flint, many scholars suggest that it refers to diamond. It is unlikely that diamond was known to ancient Israel, however, so probably a hard stone like emery or corundum is in view. The translation nevertheless uses “diamond” because in modern times it has become proverbial for its hardness. A number of English versions use “flint” here (e.g., NASB, NIV).

[7:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “he.” Since the third person pronoun refers to the Lord, it has been translated as a first person pronoun (“I”) to accommodate English style, which typically does not exhibit switches between persons of pronouns in the same immediate context as Hebrew does.

[7:14]  ¹⁵ tn Or “desirable”; traditionally “pleasant” (so many English versions; cf. TEV “This good land”).