And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
| Word | Hebrew | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| LORD | יְהוָ֖ה Yah.weh | H3068 | Jehovah · proper noun, a title |
| spake | וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר vay.da.Ber | H1696 | perhaps properly · conjunction + verb, piel sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular |
| Moses | מֹשֶׁ֥ה mo.Sheh | H4872 | Mosheh · proper noun, a man's name |
| saying | לֵּאמֹֽר le.Mor | H559 | to say (used with great latitude) · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct |
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
And the Lord spake unto Moses,.... At the same time that he ordered him to direct the children of Israel, when they had passed over Jordan, to drive out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, and divide their land among them, he proceeded to give the limits and boundaries of the land: saying; as follows.
And the Lord spake unto Moses. God here undertakes the office of a prudent and careful father of a family, in fixing the boundaries of the land on every side, lest their right to posses it should ever be called in question. He begins on the southern side, where it must be observed that the district of Bashan is included in it, and all that the Israelites had acquired before their passage of the Jordan, so that this addition was approved of by God. He extends this part as far as the wilderness of Sin, and the borders of Edom, and brings it round from Kadesh-barnea to Addar, and the passage of Azmon, and, finally, to the stream which washes [228] the city of Rhinocorura, in the immediate vicin…
Read the whole note in the consoleChapter 34 gives the borders of the land of Canaan, which Israel was to settle according to the guidelines in 26:52-56. Ever since the call of Abraham (Gen 12:1-7), the Promised Land of Canaan had stood at the heart of the Old Testament story. Though an entire generation of Hebrews died in the wilderness because they refused to believe the report of the faithful spies (Num 13), God had reaffirmed his promise of land (33:53). Here, God reviewed the plan and identified the boundaries of the Promised Land in an idealized form (cp. Josh 13–19; Ezek 47–48). Old Testament Israel did not possess the exact extent of the territory described here (though it came close in the days of David and Solomon;…
Read the whole note in the consoleHenry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Clarke, Gill, Calvin and Keil & Delitzsch are in the public domain; Tyndale Open Study Notes © Tyndale House Publishers, CC BY-SA 4.0 — all from the Free Use Bible API (bible.helloao.org). Rashi: the Rosenbaum & Silbermann Pentateuch (public domain) and the Judaica Press and Metsudah Tanakh (CC BY), via Sefaria. Spurgeon's Treasury of David: public domain (lyteword's markdown edition, CC0).
The last narrative in the book of Numbers is recounted, in which the Lord commands Moses to give precepts to the children of Israel so that, when they have entered the holy land to receive its inheritance, they may know what boundaries of their borders they ought to observe in it. And after these things, with the Lord himself now describing it, it is said: toward the Africus, that is, toward the west, let the boundary of that place be observed, and of that one toward the east; and thus through the four quarters of heaven the Lord himself designates certain names which the people of God ought to keep in this earthly Judaea. Now the simpler among the hearers will say concerning these things that they can seem necessary and useful even according to the letter, for this reason: that no one may transgress the boundaries established by the Lord's precept, and that one tribe may not dare to violate the borders of another. And what shall we do, since in these lands there remains for the Jews no possibility not only of invading another's borders, but even of possessing anything in any way at all? For they are fugitives from it and, banished, live in exile; and the borders which those now in possession keep are not those which the divine law appointed, but those which the laws of the conquerors have assigned. What, I say, shall we do, who read these things in the Church? If we read them according to the understanding of the Jews, they will surely seem to us superfluous and empty. But I, who read what is written concerning wisdom, "Go out after her like a tracker," wish to go out after her; and since I do not find her in bodily things, I desire to follow her tracks and to investigate where she goes, and to see to what resting-places she draws my understanding. For I think that, if I am able diligently to follow her and to investigate her ways, she will give me some occasions from the Scriptures as to how we too ought to explain even these passages, if we believe those things which Paul speaks in a mystery: that those who serve through the law serve a shadow and an image of heavenly things. And if, no less according to his own opinion, the law—of which this reading that we have in hand is a part—has a shadow of the good things to come, it seems consequent and necessary that all things which are described in the law as though about earthly matters are shadows of…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
