Discovery BoxNumbers 13:32 
Context13:32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging 1 report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through 2 to investigate is a land that devours 3 its inhabitants. 4 All the people we saw there 5 are of great stature.
Numbers 16:38
Context16:38 As for the censers of these men who sinned at the cost of their lives, 6 they must be made 7 into hammered sheets for covering the altar, because they presented them before the Lord and sanctified them. They will become a sign to the Israelites.”
1 tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.
2 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.
3 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.
4 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.
5 tn Heb “in its midst.”
6 tn The expression is “in/by/against their life.” That they sinned against their life means that they brought ruin to themselves.
7 tn The form is the perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive. But there is no expressed subject for “and they shall make them,” and so it may be treated as a passive (“they shall [must] be made”).
