Numbers 16:37-40

16:37 “Tell ¹  Eleazar son of Aaron the priest to pick up ²  the censers out of the flame, for they are holy, and then scatter the coals of fire ³  at a distance. 16:38 As for the censers of these men who sinned at the cost of their lives, ⁴  they must be made ⁵  into hammered sheets for covering the altar, because they presented them before the Lord and sanctified them. They will become a sign to the Israelites.” 16:39 So Eleazar the priest took the bronze censers presented by those who had been burned up, and they were hammered out as a covering for the altar. 16:40 It was a memorial for the Israelites, that no outsider who is not a descendant of ⁶  Aaron should approach to burn incense before the Lord, that he might not become like Korah and his company – just as the Lord had spoken by the authority ⁷  of Moses.

[16:37]  ¹ tn Heb “say to.”

[16:37]  ² tn The verb is the jussive with a vav (ו) coming after the imperative; it may be subordinated to form a purpose clause (“that he may pick up”) or the object of the imperative.

[16:37]  ³ tn The Hebrew text just has “fire,” but it would be hard to conceive of this action apart from the idea of coals of fire.

[16:38]  ⁴ tn The expression is “in/by/against their life.” That they sinned against their life means that they brought ruin to themselves.

[16:38]  ⁵ tn The form is the perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive. But there is no expressed subject for “and they shall make them,” and so it may be treated as a passive (“they shall [must] be made”).

[16:40]  ⁷ tn Heb “from the seed of.”

[16:40]  ⁸ tn Heb “hand.”