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Numbers 35:5-7
New English Translation
Numbers 35:5-7
New English Translation
5 “You must measure[a] from outside the wall of the town on the east 1,000 yards,[b] and on the south side 1,000 yards, and on the west side 1,000 yards, and on the north side 1,000 yards, with the town in the middle.[c] This territory must belong to them as grazing land for the towns. 6 Now from these towns that you will give to the Levites you must select six towns of refuge to which a person who has killed someone may flee.[d] And you must give them forty-two other towns.
7 “So the total of the towns you will give the Levites is forty-eight. You must give these together with their grazing lands.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Numbers 35:5 tn The verb is the Qal perfect of מָדַד (madad, “to measure”). With its vav (ו) consecutive it carries the same instructional force as the imperfect.
- Numbers 35:5 tn Heb “2,000 cubits” (also three more times in this verse). This would be a distance of 3,000 feet or 1,000 yards (914.4 meters).
- Numbers 35:5 sn The precise nature of the layout described here is not altogether clear. V. 4 speaks of the distance from the wall as being 500 yards; v. 5, however, describes measurements of 1,000 yards. Various proposals have been made in order to harmonize vv. 4 and 5. P. J. Budd, Numbers (WBC), 376, makes the following suggestion: “It may be best to assume that the cubits of the Levitical pasture lands are cubit frontages of land—in other words on each side of the city there was a block of land with a frontage of 2,000 cubits (v 5), and a depth of 1000 cubits (v 4).”
- Numbers 35:6 tn The “manslayer” is the verb “to kill” in a participial form, providing the subject of the clause. The verb means “to kill”; it can mean accidental killing, premeditated killing, or capital punishment. The clause uses the infinitive to express purpose or result: “to flee there the manslayer,” means “so that the manslayer may flee there.”
New English Translation (NET)
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