Numbers 4:7

4:7 “On the table of the presence ¹  they must spread a blue ²  cloth, and put on it the dishes, the pans, the bowls, and the pitchers for pouring, and the Bread of the Presence must be on it continually.

Numbers 7:1

The Leader’s Offerings

7:1 ³ When Moses had completed setting up the tabernacle, ⁴  he anointed it and consecrated it and all its furnishings, and he anointed and consecrated the altar and all its utensils.

Numbers 35:5

35:5 “You must measure ⁵  from outside the wall of the town on the east 1,000 yards, ⁶  and on the south side 1,000 yards, and on the west side 1,000 yards, and on the north side 1,000 yards, with the town in the middle. ⁷  This territory must belong to them as grazing land for the towns.

[4:7]  ¹ sn The Hebrew actually has the “table of faces,” and this has been traditionally rendered “table of shewbread.”

[4:7]  ² tn The Greek has “violet” instead of blue. This is also the case in vv. 8, 10, and 14.

[7:1]  ³ sn This long and repetitious chapter has several parts to it: the introduction (vv. 1-3), the assigning of gifts (vv. 4-9), the time of presentation (vv. 10-11), and then the tribes (vv. 12-83), and then a summary (vv. 84-89).

[7:1]  ⁴ tn The construction of this line begins with the temporal indicator (traditionally translated “and it came to pass”) and then after the idiomatic “in the day of” (= “when”) uses the Piel infinitive construct from כָּלָה (kalah). The infinitive is governed by the subjective genitive, “Moses,” the formal subject of the clause. The object of the infinitive is the second infinitive, “to set up” (לְהָקִים, lÿhaqim). This infinitive, the Hiphil, serves as the direct object, answering the question of what it was that Moses completed. The entire clause is an adverbial clause of time.

[35:5]  ⁵ tn The verb is the Qal perfect of מָדַד (madad, “to measure”). With its vav (ו) consecutive it carries the same instructional force as the imperfect.

[35:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “two thousand cubits” (also three more times in this verse). This would be a distance of 3,000 feet or 1,000 yards (1,350 meters).

[35:5]  ⁷ sn The precise nature of the layout described here is not altogether clear. V. 4 speaks of the distance from the wall as being 500 yards; v. 5, however, describes measurements of 1,000 yards. Various proposals have been made in order to harmonize vv. 4 and 5. P. J. Budd, Numbers (WBC), 376, makes the following suggestion: “It may be best to assume that the cubits of the Levitical pasture lands are cubit frontages of land – in other words on each side of the city there was a block of land with a frontage of two thousand cubits (v 5), and a depth of 1000 cubits (v 4).”