Numbers 5:21

5:21 Then the priest will put the woman under the oath of the curse ¹  and will say ²  to the her, “The Lord make you an attested curse ³  among your people, ⁴  if the Lord makes ⁵  your thigh fall away ⁶  and your abdomen swell; ⁷ 

Numbers 9:7

9:7 And those men said to him, “We are ceremonially defiled by the dead body of a man; why are we kept back from offering the Lord’s offering at its appointed time among the Israelites?”

Numbers 17:6

17:6 So Moses spoke to the Israelites, and each of their leaders gave him a staff, one for each leader, ⁸  according to their tribes ⁹  – twelve staffs; the staff of Aaron was among their staffs.

Numbers 18:24

18:24 But I have given ¹⁰  to the Levites for an inheritance the tithes of the Israelites that are offered ¹¹  to the Lord as a raised offering. That is why I said to them that among the Israelites they are to have no inheritance.”

Numbers 27:3

27:3 “Our father died in the wilderness, although ¹²  he was not part of ¹³  the company of those that gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah; but he died for his own sin, ¹⁴  and he had no sons.

Numbers 35:5

35:5 “You must measure ¹⁵  from outside the wall of the town on the east 1,000 yards, ¹⁶  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. ¹⁷  This territory must belong to them as grazing land for the towns.

Numbers 35:34

35:34 Therefore do not defile the land that you will inhabit, in which I live, for I the Lord live among the Israelites.”

[5:21]  ¹ sn For information on such curses, see M. R. Lehmann, “Biblical Oaths,” ZAW 81 (1969): 74-92; A. C. Thiselton, “The Supposed Power of Words in the Biblical Writings,” JTS 25 (1974): 283-99; and F. C. Fensham, “Malediction and Benediction in Ancient Vassal Treaties and the Old Testament,” ZAW 74 (1962): 1-9.

[5:21]  ² tn Heb “the priest will say.”

[5:21]  ³ tn This interpretation takes the two nouns as a hendiadys. The literal wording is “the Lord make you a curse and an oath among the people.” In what sense would she be an oath? The point of the whole passage is that the priest is making her take an oath to see if she has been sinful and will be cursed.

[5:21]  ⁴ sn The outcome of this would be that she would be quoted by people in such forms of expression as an oath or a curse (see Jer 29:22).

[5:21]  ⁵ tn The construction uses the infinitive construct with the preposition to form an adverbial clause: “in the giving of the Lord…,” meaning, “if and when the Lord makes such and such to happen.”

[5:21]  ⁶ tn TEV takes the expression “your thigh” as a euphemism for the genitals: “cause your genital organs to shrink.”

[5:21]  ⁷ sn Most commentators take the expressions to be euphemisms of miscarriage or stillbirth, meaning that there would be no fruit from an illegitimate union. The idea of the abdomen swelling has been reinterpreted by NEB to mean “fall away.” If this interpretation stands, then the idea is that the woman has become pregnant, and that has aroused the suspicion of the husband for some reason. R. K. Harrison (Numbers [WEC], 111-13) discusses a variety of other explanations for diseases and conditions that might be described by these terms. He translates it with “miscarriage,” but leaves open what the description might actually be. Cf. NRSV “makes your uterus drop, your womb discharge.”

[17:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “a rod for one leader, a rod for one leader.”

[17:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “the house of their fathers.”

[18:24]  ¹⁵ tn The classification of the perfect tense here too could be the perfect of resolve, since this law is declaring what will be their portion – “I have decided to give.”

[18:24]  ¹⁶ tn In the Hebrew text the verb has no expressed subject (although the “Israelites” is certainly intended), and so it can be rendered as a passive.

[27:3]  ²² tn This clause begins with a vav (ו) on a pronoun, marking it out as a disjunctive vav. In this context it fits best to take it as a circumstantial clause introducing concession.

[27:3]  ²³ tn Heb “in the midst of.”

[27:3]  ²⁴ tn The word order is emphatic: “but in/on account of his own sins he died.”

[35:5]  ²⁹ 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]  ³⁰ 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]  ³¹ 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).”