32:33 So Moses gave to the Gadites, the Reubenites, and to half the tribe of Manasseh son of Joseph the realm of King Sihon of the Amorites, and the realm of King Og of Bashan, the entire land with its cities and the territory surrounding them. 2
35:5 “You must measure 3 from outside the wall of the town on the east 1,000 yards, 4 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. 5 This territory must belong to them as grazing land for the towns.
1 tn Heb “and the land is subdued before you.”
2 tn Heb “the land with its cities in the borders of the cities of the land all around.”
3 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.
4 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).
5 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).”