Bilangan 10:2

10:2 “Make ¹  two trumpets of silver; you are to make ²  them from a single hammered piece. ³  You will use them ⁴  for assembling the community and for directing the traveling of the camps.

Bilangan 11:15

11:15 But if you are going to deal ⁵  with me like this, then kill me immediately. ⁶  If I have found favor in your sight then do not let me see my trouble.” ⁷ 

Bilangan 21:8

21:8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous snake and set it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks ⁸  at it, he will live.”

Bilangan 33:4

33:4 Now the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom the Lord had killed among them; the Lord also executed judgments on their gods.

[10:2]  ¹ tn The Hebrew text uses what is called the “ethical dative” – “make [for] you two trumpets.” It need not be translated, but can simply be taken to underscore the direct imperative.

[10:2]  ² tn The imperfect tense is again instruction or legislation.

[10:2]  ³ sn The instructions are not clearly spelled out here. But the trumpets were to be made of silver ingots beaten out into a sheet of silver and then bent to form a trumpet. There is archaeological evidence of silver smelting as early as 3000 b.c. Making silver trumpets would have been a fairly easy thing for the Israelites to do. The trumpet would have been straight, with a tapered form, very unlike the “ram’s horn” (שׁוֹפָר, shofar). The trumpets were used by the priests in Israel from the outset, but later were used more widely. The sound would be sharp and piercing, but limited in scope to a few notes. See further C. Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments.

[10:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “and they shall be for you for assembling,” which is the way of expressing possession. Here the intent concerns how Moses was to use them.

[11:15]  ⁵ tn The participle expresses the future idea of what God is doing, or what he is going to be doing. Moses would rather be killed than be given a totally impossible duty over a people that were not his.

[11:15]  ⁶ tn The imperative of הָרַג (harag) is followed by the infinitive absolute for emphasis. The point is more that the infinitive adds to the emphasis of the imperative mood, which would be immediate compliance.

[11:15]  ⁷ tn Or “my own ruin” (NIV). The word “trouble” here probably refers to the stress and difficulty of caring for a complaining group of people. The suffix on the noun would be objective, perhaps stressing the indirect object of the noun – trouble for me. The expression “on my trouble” (בְּרָעָתִי, bÿra’ati) is one of the so-called tiqqune sopherim, or “emendations of the scribes.” According to this tradition the original reading in v. 15 was [to look] “on your evil” (בְּרָעָתֶךָ, bÿra’atekha), meaning “the calamity that you bring about” for Israel. However, since such an expression could be mistakenly thought to attribute evil to the Lord, the ancient scribes changed it to the reading found in the MT.

[21:8]  ⁸ tn The word order is slightly different in Hebrew: “and it shall be anyone who is bitten when he looks at it he shall live.”