¹ tn Heb “Yet the Lord did not turn away from the fury of his great anger because his anger raged against Judah on account of all the infuriating things by which Manasseh had made him angry.”

² tn Heb “From my master the king is this thing done, and you did not make known to your servants who will sit on the throne of my master the king after him?”

² tn Heb “and the thing which David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Note the verbal connection with v. 25. Though David did not regard the matter as evil, the Lord certainly did.

¹ sn The upper millstone (Heb “millstone of riding”) refers to the heavy circular stone that was commonly rolled over a circular base in order to crush and grind such things as olives.

² sn The Hebrew word occurs only twice in the OT, here and again in v. 14. Its exact meaning is not entirely clear, although from the context it appears to be a sacrificial tool used for retrieving things from boiling water.

² tn Heb “but empty the Lord has brought me back.” The disjunctive clause structure (vav + adverb + verb + subject) highlights the contrast between her former condition and present situation. Cf. TEV “has brought me back without a thing.”

² tn Heb “to do at their arrival in Geba of Benjamin according to all the disgraceful [thing] which he [collective = “Benjamin”] did in Israel.” Here “Geba” must be an error for “Gibeah.”

¹ tn Heb “As the Lord commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua acted accordingly; he did not turn aside a thing from all which the Lord commanded Moses.”

¹ tn The term עוֹף (ʿof) refers to winged creatures more broadly than “birds” and is repeated in v. 20. Here “swarming winged things” (שֶׁרֶץ הָעוֹף, sherets haʿof) most likely refers to “insects.”

² sn Divine judgment refers to God’s designation of certain persons, places, and things as objects of his special wrath and judgment because, in his omniscience, he knows them to be impure and hopelessly unrepentant.

⁴ tn The word נְחָשִׁים (n^ekhashim) means “omens,” or possibly “auguries.” Balaam is not even making a pretense now of looking for such things because they are not going to work. God has overruled them.

⁴ sn He went up to a bald spot, to a barren height. The statement underscores the general belief that such tops were the closest things to the gods. On such heights people built their shrines and temples.

⁴ sn The statement is striking. Obviously the Lord knows all things. But the statement of the obvious here is meant to indicate that the Lord was about to do something about this.

¹ tn The Hebrew text simply has “the holy of holies,” or “the holy of the holy things” (קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים, qodesh haqqodashim). The context indicates that this refers to all the sacred furnishings.

² tn Heb “the keepers of the responsibility” (שֹׁמְרֵי מִשְׁמֶרֶת, shom^erey mishmeret). The participle is a genitive specifying the duty to which he was appointed (thing possessed); its cognate genitive emphasizes that their responsibility was over the holy place.

¹ tn Heb “And a man, if he eats a holy thing in error” (see the Lev 4:2 note on “straying,” which is the term rendered “by mistake” here).

² tn The word “creatures” has been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the following relative clause modifies the animal, bird, or creeping thing mentioned earlier, and not the ground itself.

³ tn The Hebrew term תֶּבֶל (tevel, “perversion”) derives from the verb “to mix; to confuse” and therefore refers to illegitimate mixtures of species or violation of the natural order of things.

¹ tn This translation takes “offering” as an adverbial accusative explaining the form or purpose of their bringing things. It could also be treated as the direct object, but that would seem unnecessarily repetitive.

⁴ sn The word can mean “continually,” but in this context, as well as in the passages on the sacrifices, “regularly” is better, since each morning things were cleaned and restored.