11:1 3 When the people complained, 4 it displeased 5 the Lord. When the Lord heard 6 it, his anger burned, 7 and so 8 the fire of the Lord 9 burned among them and consumed some of the outer parts of the camp.
11:10 10 Moses heard the people weeping 11 throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and when the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly, Moses was also displeased. 12
22:22 Then God’s anger was kindled 18 because he went, and the angel of the Lord stood in the road to oppose 19 him. Now he was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him.
25:4 The Lord said to Moses, “Arrest all the leaders 20 of the people, and hang them up 21 before the Lord in broad daylight, 22 so that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.”
1 tc Instead of “wrath” the Greek text has “sin,” focusing the emphasis on the human error and not on the wrath of God. This may have been a conscious change to explain the divine wrath.
tn Heb “so that there be no wrath on.” In context this is clearly the divine anger, so “the
2 tn The main verb of the clause is the perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive, וְשָׁמְרוּ (vÿshamÿru) meaning they “shall guard, protect, watch over, care for.” It may carry the same obligatory nuance as the preceding verbs because of the sequence. The object used with this is the cognate noun מִשְׁמֶרֶת (mishmeret): “The Levites must care for the care of the tabernacle.” The cognate intensifies the construction to stress that they are responsible for this care.
3 sn The chapter includes the initial general complaints (vv. 1-3), the complaints about food (vv. 4-9), Moses’ own complaint to the
4 tn The temporal clause uses the Hitpoel infinitive construct from אָנַן (’anan). It is a rare word, occurring in Lam 3:39. With this blunt introduction the constant emphasis of obedience to the word of the
5 tn Heb “it was evil in the ears of the
6 tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated to the next verb as a temporal clause.
7 tn The common Hebrew expression uses the verb חָרָה (harah, “to be hot, to burn, to be kindled”). The subject is אַפּוֹ (’appo), “his anger” or more literally, his nose, which in this anthropomorphic expression flares in rage. The emphasis is superlative – “his anger raged.”
8 tn The vav (ו) consecutive does not simply show sequence in the verbs, but here expresses the result of the anger of the
9 sn The “fire of the
10 sn Moses begins to feel the burden of caring for this people, a stubborn and rebellious people. His complaint shows how contagious their complaining has been. It is one thing to cry out to God about the load of ministry, but it is quite another to do it in such a way as to reflect a lack of faith in God’s provision. God has to remind the leader Moses that he, the
11 tn The participle “weeping” is functioning here as the noun in the accusative case, an adverbial accusative of state. It is explicative of the object.
12 tn Heb “it was evil in the eyes of Moses.”
13 tn The verb is a prefixed conjugation, normally an imperfect tense. But coming after the adverb טֶּרֶם (terem) it is treated as a preterite.
14 tn The expression is רַב־חֶסֶד (rav khesed) means “much of loyal love,” or “faithful love.” Some have it “totally faithful,” but that omits the aspect of his love.
15 tn Or “rebellion.”
16 tn The infinitive absolute emphasizes the verbal activity of the imperfect tense, which here serves as a habitual imperfect. Negated it states what God does not do; and the infinitive makes that certain.
17 sn The Decalogue adds “to those who hate me.” The point of the line is that the effects of sin, if not the sinful traits themselves, are passed on to the next generation.
18 sn God’s anger now seems to contradict the permission he gave Balaam just before this. Some commentators argue that God’s anger is a response to Balaam’s character in setting out – which the Bible does not explain. God saw in him greed and pleasure for the riches, which is why he was so willing to go.
19 tn The word is שָׂטָן (satan, “to be an adversary, to oppose”).
20 sn The meaning must be the leaders behind the apostasy, for they would now be arrested. They were responsible for the tribes’ conformity to the Law, but here they had not only failed in their duty, but had participated. The leaders were executed; the rest of the guilty died by the plague.
21 sn The leaders who were guilty were commanded by God to be publicly exposed by hanging, probably a reference to impaling, but possibly some other form of harsh punishment. The point was that the swaying of their executed bodies would be a startling warning for any who so blatantly set the Law aside and indulged in apostasy through pagan sexual orgies.
22 tn Heb “in the sun.” This means in broad daylight.
23 tn Heb “he was zealous with my zeal.” The repetition of forms for “zeal” in the line stresses the passion of Phinehas. The word “zeal” means a passionate intensity to protect or preserve divine or social institutions.
24 tn The word for “zeal” now occurs a third time. While some English versions translate this word here as “jealousy” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV), it carries the force of God’s passionate determination to defend his rights and what is right about the covenant and the community and parallels the “zeal” that Phinehas had just demonstrated.
25 tn Heb “in the eyes of.”
26 tn The verb is difficult to translate, since it has the idea of “complete, finish” (תָּמָם, tamam). It could be translated “consumed” in this passage (so KJV, ASV); NASB “was destroyed.”