Numbers 13:21

The Spies’ Activities

13:21 So they went up and investigated the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, ¹  at the entrance of Hamath. ² 

Numbers 14:25

14:25 (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites were living in the valleys.) ³  Tomorrow, turn and journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.”

Numbers 15:32

15:32 When the Israelites were ⁴  in the wilderness they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. ⁵ 

Numbers 20:4

20:4 Why ⁶  have you brought up the Lord’s community into this wilderness? So that ⁷  we and our cattle should die here?

Numbers 21:11

21:11 Then they traveled on from Oboth and camped at Iye Abarim, ⁸  in the wilderness that is before Moab, on the eastern side. ⁹ 

Numbers 21:18

21:18 The well which the princes ¹⁰  dug,

which the leaders of the people opened

with their scepters and their staffs.”

And from the wilderness they traveled to Mattanah;

Numbers 32:15

32:15 For if you turn away from following him, he will once again abandon ¹¹  them in the wilderness, and you will be the reason for their destruction.” ¹² 

[13:21]  ¹ sn Zin is on the southern edge of the land, but Rehob is far north, near Mount Hermon. The spies covered all the land.

[13:21]  ² tn The idiom uses the infinitive construct: “to enter Hamath,” meaning, “on the way that people go to Hamath.”

[14:25]  ³ 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.

[15:32]  ⁵ tn The preterite of the verb “to be” is here subordinated to the next, parallel verb form, to form a temporal clause.

[15:32]  ⁶ sn For this brief passage, see A. Phillips, “The Case of the Woodgatherer Reconsidered,” VT 19 (1969): 125-28; J. Weingreen, “The Case of the Woodgatherer (Numbers XV 32-36),” VT 16 (1966): 361-64; and B. J. Bamberger, “Revelations of Torah after Sinai,” HUCA 16 (1941): 97-113. Weingreen argues that there is something of the Rabbinic method of setting a fence around the Law here; in other words, if this sin were not punished, the Law would have been violated in greater ways. Gathering of wood, although seemingly harmless, is done with intent to kindle fire, and so reveals a culpable intent.

[20:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “and why….” The conjunction seems to be recording another thing that the people said in their complaint against Moses.

[20:4]  ⁸ tn The clause uses the infinitive construct with the lamed (ל) preposition. The clause would be a result clause in this sentence: “Why have you brought us here…with the result that we will all die?”

[21:11]  ⁹ sn These places are uncertain. Oboth may be some 15 miles (25 km) from the south end of the Dead Sea at a place called ‘Ain el-Weiba. Iye Abarim may be the modern Mahay at the southeastern corner of Moab. See J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament.

[21:11]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the rising of the sun.”

[21:18]  ¹¹ sn The brief song is supposed to be an old workers’ song, and so the mention of leaders and princes is unusual. Some think they are given credit because they directed where the workers were to dig. The scepter and staff might have served some symbolic or divining custom.

[32:15]  ¹³ tn The construction uses a verbal hendiadys with the verb “to add” serving to modify the main verb.

[32:15]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and you will destroy all this people.”