Discovery BoxNumbers 14:35-45
Context14:35 I, the Lord, have said, “I will surely do so to all this evil congregation that has gathered together against me. In this wilderness they will be finished, and there they will die!”’”
14:36 The men whom Moses sent to investigate the land, who returned and made the whole community murmur against him by producing 1 an evil report about the land, 14:37 those men who produced the evil report about the land, died by the plague before the Lord. 14:38 But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among 2 the men who went to investigate the land, lived. 14:39 When Moses told 3 these things to all the Israelites, the people mourned 4 greatly.
14:40 And early 5 in the morning they went up to the crest of the hill country, 6 saying, “Here we are, and we will go up to the place that the Lord commanded, 7 for we have sinned.” 8 14:41 But Moses said, “Why 9 are you now transgressing the commandment 10 of the Lord? It will not succeed! 14:42 Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, and you will be 11 defeated before your enemies. 14:43 For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you will fall by the sword. Because you have turned away from the Lord, the Lord will not be with you.”
14:44 But they dared 12 to go up to the crest of the hill, although 13 neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed from the camp. 14:45 So the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country swooped 14 down and attacked them 15 as far as Hormah. 16
[14:36] 1 tn The verb is the Hiphil infinitive construct with a lamed (ל) preposition from the root יָצָא (yatsa’, “to bring out”). The use of the infinitive here is epexegetical, that is, explaining how they caused the people to murmur.
[14:38] 2 tn The Hebrew text uses the preposition “from,” “some of” – “from those men.” The relative pronoun is added to make a smoother reading.
[14:39] 3 tn The preterite here is subordinated to the next preterite to form a temporal clause.
[14:39] 4 tn The word אָבַל (’aval) is rare, used mostly for mourning over deaths, but it is used here of mourning over bad news (see also Exod 33:4; 1 Sam 15:35; 16:1; etc.).
[14:40] 5 tn The verb וַיַּשְׁכִּמוּ (vayyashkimu) is often found in a verbal hendiadys construction: “They rose early…and they went up” means “they went up early.”
[14:40] 6 tn The Hebrew text says literally “the top of the hill,” but judging from the location and the terrain it probably means the heights of the hill country.
[14:40] 7 tn The verb is simply “said,” but it means the place that the
[14:40] 8 sn Their sin was unbelief. They could have gone and conquered the area if they had trusted the
[14:41] 9 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?”
[14:42] 11 tn This verb could also be subordinated to the preceding: “that you be not smitten.”
[14:44] 12 tn N. H. Snaith compares Arabic ’afala (“to swell”) and gafala (“reckless, headstrong”; Leviticus and Numbers [NCB], 248). The wordעֹפֶל (’ofel) means a “rounded hill” or a “tumor.” The idea behind the verb may be that of “swelling,” and so “act presumptuously.”
[14:44] 13 tn The disjunctive vav (ו) here introduces a circumstantial clause; the most appropriate one here would be the concessive “although.”
[14:45] 14 tn Heb “came down.”
[14:45] 15 tn The verb used here means “crush by beating,” or “pounded” them. The Greek text used “cut them in pieces.”
[14:45] 16 tn The name “Hormah” means “destruction”; it is from the word that means “ban, devote” for either destruction or temple use.
