Numbers 5:18

5:18 Then the priest will have the woman stand before the Lord, uncover the woman’s head, and put the grain offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of suspicion. The priest will hold in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. ¹ 

Numbers 13:32

13:32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging ²  report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through ³  to investigate is a land that devours ⁴  its inhabitants. ⁵  All the people we saw there ⁶  are of great stature.

Numbers 16:30

16:30 But if the Lord does something entirely new, ⁷  and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up ⁸  along with all that they have, and they ⁹  go down alive to the grave, ¹⁰  then you will know that these men have despised the Lord!”

Numbers 25:18

25:18 because they bring trouble to you by their treachery with which they have deceived ¹¹  you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, ¹²  their sister, who was killed on the day of the plague that happened as a result of Peor.”

Numbers 33:55

33:55 But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land before you, then those whom you allow to remain will be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your side, and will cause you trouble in the land where you will be living.

[5:18]  ¹ tn The expression has been challenged. The first part, “bitter water,” has been thought to mean “water of contention” (so NEB), but this is not convincing. It has some support in the versions which read “contention” and “testing,” no doubt trying to fit the passage better. N. H. Snaith (Leviticus and Numbers [NCB], 129) suggests from an Arabic word that it was designed to cause an abortion – but that would raise an entirely different question, one of who the father of a child was. And that has not been introduced here. The water was “bitter” in view of the consequences it held for her if she was proven to be guilty. That is then enforced by the wordplay with the last word, the Piel participle הַמְאָרֲרִים (ham’ararim). The bitter water, if it convicted her, would pronounce a curse on her. So she was literally holding her life in her hands.

[13:32]  ² tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.

[13:32]  ³ tn Heb “which we passed over in it”; the pronoun on the preposition serves as a resumptive pronoun for the relative, and need not be translated literally.

[13:32]  ⁴ tn The verb is the feminine singular participle from אָכַל (’akhal); it modifies the land as a “devouring land,” a bold figure for the difficulty of living in the place.

[13:32]  ⁵ sn The expression has been interpreted in a number of ways by commentators, such as that the land was infertile, that the Canaanites were cannibals, that it was a land filled with warlike dissensions, or that it denotes a land geared for battle. It may be that they intended the land to seem infertile and insecure.

[13:32]  ⁶ tn Heb “in its midst.”

[16:30]  ³ tn The verb בָּרָא (bara’) is normally translated “create” in the Bible. More specifically it means to fashion or make or do something new and fresh. Here the verb is joined with its cognate accusative to underscore that this will be so different everyone will know it is of God.

[16:30]  ⁴ tn The figures are personifications. But they vividly describe the catastrophe to follow – which was very much like a mouth swallowing them.

[16:30]  ⁵ tn The word is “life” or “lifetime”; it certainly means their lives – they themselves. But the presence of this word suggest more. It is an accusative specifying the state of the subject – they will go down alive to Sheol.

[16:30]  ⁶ tn The word “Sheol” in the Bible can be used four different ways: the grave, the realm of the departed [wicked] spirits or Hell, death in general, or a place of extreme danger (one that will lead to the grave if God does not intervene). The usage here is certainly the first, and very likely the second as well. A translation of “pit” would not be inappropriate. Since they will go down there alive, it is likely that they will sense the deprivation and the separation from the land above. See H. W. Robinson, Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament; N. J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Netherworld in the Old Testament (BibOr 21), 21-23; and A. Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic, especially ch. 3.

[25:18]  ⁴ tn This is the same word as that translated “treachery.”

[25:18]  ⁵ sn Cozbi’s father, Zur, was one of five Midianite kings who eventually succumbed to Israel (Num 31:8). When the text gives the name and family of a woman, it is asserting that she is important, at least for social reasons, among her people.