Discovery BoxNumbers 3:4 
Context3:4 Nadab and Abihu died 1 before the Lord 2 when they offered 3 strange 4 fire 5 before the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai, and they had no children. 6 So Eleazar and Ithamar ministered as priests 7 in the presence of 8 Aaron their father.
Numbers 4:49
Context4:49 According to the word of the Lord they were numbered, 9 by the authority of Moses, each according to his service and according to what he was to carry. 10 Thus were they numbered by him, 11 as the Lord had commanded Moses.
Numbers 5:20
Context5:20 But if you 12 have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had sexual relations with you….” 13
Numbers 7:1-2
Context7:1 14 When Moses had completed setting up the tabernacle, 15 he anointed it and consecrated it and all its furnishings, and he anointed and consecrated the altar and all its utensils. 7:2 Then the leaders of Israel, the heads of their clans, 16 made an offering. They were the leaders of the tribes; they were the ones who had been supervising 17 the numbering.
Numbers 8:4
Context8:4 This is how the lampstand was made: 18 It was beaten work in gold; 19 from its shaft to its flowers it was beaten work. According to the pattern which the Lord had shown Moses, so he made the lampstand.
Numbers 8:22
Context8:22 After this, the Levites went in to do their work in the tent of meeting before Aaron and before his sons. As the Lord had commanded Moses concerning the Levites, so they did.
Numbers 9:5
Context9:5 And they observed the Passover 20 on the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight in the wilderness of Sinai; in accordance with all that the Lord had commanded Moses, so the Israelites did.
Numbers 11:24
Context11:24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. He then gathered seventy men of the elders of the people and had them stand around the tabernacle.
Numbers 12:14
Context12:14 The Lord said to Moses, “If her father had only spit 21 in her face, would she not have been disgraced for seven days? Shut her out from the camp seven days, and afterward she can be brought back in again.”
Numbers 13:22
Context13:22 When they went up through the Negev, they 22 came 23 to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, 24 descendants of Anak, were living. (Now Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan 25 in Egypt.)
Numbers 17:8
Context17:8 On the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony – and 26 the staff of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted, and brought forth buds, and produced blossoms, and yielded almonds! 27
Numbers 21:9
Context21:9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that if a snake had bitten someone, when he looked at the bronze snake he lived. 28
Numbers 26:64-65
Context26:64 But there was not a man among these who had been 29 among those numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest when they numbered the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai. 26:65 For the Lord had said of them, “They will surely die in the wilderness.” And there was not left a single man of them, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
Numbers 27:3
Context27:3 “Our father died in the wilderness, although 30 he was not part of 31 the company of those that gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah; but he died for his own sin, 32 and he had no sons.
Numbers 32:9
Context32:9 When 33 they went up to the Eshcol Valley and saw the land, they frustrated the intent of the Israelites so that they did not enter 34 the land that the Lord had given 35 them.
Numbers 32:13
Context32:13 So the Lord’s anger was kindled against the Israelites, and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, until all that generation that had done wickedly before 36 the Lord was finished. 37
Numbers 33:38
Context33:38 Aaron the priest ascended Mount Hor at the command 38 of the Lord, and he died there in the fortieth year after the Israelites had come out of the land of Egypt on the first day of the fifth month.
1 tn The verb form is the preterite with vav (ו) consecutive, literally “and Nadab died.” Some commentators wish to make the verb a past perfect, rendering it “and Nadab had died,” but this is not necessary. In tracing through the line from Aaron it simply reports that the first two sons died. The reference is to the event recorded in Lev 10 where the sons brought “strange” or foreign” fire to the sanctuary.
2 tc This initial clause is omitted in one Hebrew
3 tn The form בְּהַקְרִבָם (bÿhaqrivam) is the Hiphil infinitive construct functioning as a temporal clause: “when they brought near,” meaning, “when they offered.” The verb קָרַב (qarav) is familiar to students of the NT because of “corban” in Mark 7:11.
4 tn Or “prohibited.” See HALOT 279 s.v. זָר 3.
5 tn The expression אֵשׁ זָרָה (’esh zarah, “strange fire”) seems imprecise and has been interpreted numerous ways (see the helpful summary in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC 4], 132-33). The infraction may have involved any of the following or a combination thereof: (1) using coals from some place other than the burnt offering altar (i.e., “unauthorized coals” according to J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:598; cf. Lev 16:12 and cf. “unauthorized person” [אִישׁ זָר, ’ish zar] in Num 16:40 [17:5 HT], NASB “layman”), (2) using the wrong kind of incense (cf. the Exod 30:9 regulation against “strange incense” [קְטֹרֶת זָרָה, qÿtoret zarah] on the incense altar and the possible connection to Exod 30:34-38), (3) performing an incense offering at an unprescribed time (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 59), or (4) entering the Holy of Holies at an inappropriate time (Lev 16:1-2).
sn This event is narrated in Lev 10:1-7.
6 sn The two young priests had been cut down before they had children; the ranks of the family of Aaron were thereby cut in half in one judgment from God. The significance of the act of judgment was to show that the priests had to sanctify the
7 tn The verb is the Piel preterite from the root כָּהַן (kahan): “to function as a priest” or “to minister.”
8 tn The expression “in the presence of” can also mean “during the lifetime of” (see Gen 11:28; see also BDB 818 s.v. פָּנֶה II.7.a; cf. NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).
9 tn The verb is the simple perfect tense – “he numbered them.” There is no expressed subject; therefore, the verb can be rendered as a passive.
10 tn Or “his burden.”
11 tn The passive form simply reads “those numbered by him.” Because of the cryptic nature of the word, some suggest reading a preterite, “and they were numbered.” This is supported by the Greek, Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate. It would follow in the emendation that the relative pronoun be changed to “just as” (כַּאֲשֶׁר, ka’asher). The MT is impossible the way it stands; it can only be rendered into smooth English by adding something that is missing.
12 tn The pronoun is emphatic – “but you, if you have gone astray.”
13 tn This is an example of the rhetorical device known as aposiopesis, or “sudden silence.” The sentence is broken off due to the intensity or emphasis of the moment. The reader is left to conclude what the sentence would have said.
14 sn This long and repetitious chapter has several parts to it: the introduction (vv. 1-3), the assigning of gifts (vv. 4-9), the time of presentation (vv. 10-11), and then the tribes (vv. 12-83), and then a summary (vv. 84-89).
15 tn The construction of this line begins with the temporal indicator (traditionally translated “and it came to pass”) and then after the idiomatic “in the day of” (= “when”) uses the Piel infinitive construct from כָּלָה (kalah). The infinitive is governed by the subjective genitive, “Moses,” the formal subject of the clause. The object of the infinitive is the second infinitive, “to set up” (לְהָקִים, lÿhaqim). This infinitive, the Hiphil, serves as the direct object, answering the question of what it was that Moses completed. The entire clause is an adverbial clause of time.
sn This chapter belongs chronologically after Lev 8:11, because Aaron and his sons were not yet made the celebrants and officiants of the new shrine (completed in Exodus). Here then chapters 7-9 are actually earlier than chapters 1-6, and form a supplement by adding information not found in Exodus and Leviticus. The first verse here recapitulates the first act of Moses in consecrating the shrine (Exod 30:23-31).
16 tn Heb “the house of their fathers.”
17 tn The form is the Qal active participle from the verb “to stand” (עָמַד, ’amad). The form describes these leaders as “the ones standing over [the ones numbered].” The expression, along with the clear indication of the first census in chapter 1, shows that this was a supervisory capacity.
18 tn The Hebrew text literally has “and this is the work of the lampstand,” but that rendering does not convey the sense that it is describing how it was made.
19 sn The idea is that it was all hammered from a single plate of gold.
20 tc The LXX omits this first clause; it also omits “at twilight.”
21 tn The form is intensified by the infinitive absolute, but here the infinitive strengthens not simply the verbal idea but the conditional cause construction as well.
22 tc The MT has the singular, but the ancient versions and Smr have the plural.
23 tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated to the following clause. The first verse gave the account of their journey over the whole land; this section focuses on what happened in the area of Hebron, which would be the basis for the false report.
24 sn These names are thought to be three clans that were in the Hebron area (see Josh 15:14; Judg 1:20). To call them descendants of Anak is usually taken to mean that they were large or tall people (2 Sam 21:18-22). They were ultimately driven out by Caleb.
25 sn The text now provides a brief historical aside for the readers. Zoan was probably the city of Tanis, although that is disputed today by some scholars. It was known in Egypt in the New Kingdom as “the fields of Tanis,” which corresponded to the “fields of Zoar” in the Hebrew Bible (Ps 78:12, 43).
26 tn Here too the deictic particle (“and behold”) is added to draw attention to the sight in a vivid way.
27 sn There is no clear answer why the tribe of Levi had used an almond staff. The almond tree is one of the first to bud in the spring, and its white blossoms are a beautiful sign that winter is over. Its name became a name for “watcher”; Jeremiah plays on this name for God’s watching over his people (1:11-12).
28 sn The image of the snake was to be a symbol of the curse that the Israelites were experiencing; by lifting the snake up on a pole Moses was indicating that the curse would be drawn away from the people – if they looked to it, which was a sign of faith. This symbol was later stored in the temple, until it became an object of worship and had to be removed (2 Kgs 18:4). Jesus, of course, alluded to it and used it as an illustration of his own mission. He would become the curse, and be lifted up, so that people who looked by faith to him would live (John 3:14). For further material, see D. J. Wiseman, “Flying Serpents,” TynBul 23 (1972): 108-10; and K. R. Joines, “The Bronze Serpent in the Israelite Cult,” JBL 87 (1968): 245-56.
29 tn “who had been” is added to clarify the text.
30 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.
31 tn Heb “in the midst of.”
32 tn The word order is emphatic: “but in/on account of his own sins he died.”
33 tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated to the parallel yet chronologically later verb in the next clause.
34 tn The infinitive construct here with lamed (ל) is functioning as a result clause.
35 tn The
36 tn Heb “in the eyes of.”
37 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.”
38 tn Heb “mouth.”
