Bilangan 3:40

The Substitution for the Firstborn

3:40 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Number all the firstborn males of the Israelites from a month old and upward, and take ¹  the number of their names.

Bilangan 11:18

11:18 “And say to the people, ‘Sanctify yourselves ²  for tomorrow, and you will eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing ³  of the Lord, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat, ⁴  for life ⁵  was good for us in Egypt?” Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat.

Bilangan 18:15

18:15 The firstborn of every womb which they present to the Lord, whether human or animal, will be yours. Nevertheless, the firstborn sons you must redeem, ⁶  and the firstborn males of unclean animals you must redeem.

[3:40]  ¹ tn The verb נָשָׂא (nasa’, “take”) has here the sense of collect, take a census, or register the names.

[11:18]  ² tn The Hitpael is used to stress that they are to prepare for a holy appearance. The day was going to be special and so required their being set apart for it. But it is a holy day in the sense of the judgment that was to follow.

[11:18]  ³ tn Heb “in the ears.”

[11:18]  ⁴ tn Possibly this could be given an optative translation, to reflect the earlier one: “O that someone would give….” But the verb is not the same; here it is the Hiphil of the verb “to eat” – “who will make us eat” (i.e., provide meat for us to eat).

[11:18]  ⁵ tn The word “life” is not in the text. The expression is simply “it was for us,” or “we had good,” meaning “we had it good,” or “life was good.”

[18:15]  ⁶ tn The construction uses the infinitive absolute and the imperfect tense of the verb “to redeem” in order to stress the point – they were to be redeemed. N. H. Snaith suggests that the verb means to get by payment what was not originally yours, whereas the other root גָאַל (ga’al) means to get back what was originally yours (Leviticus and Numbers [NCB], 268).