Numbers 17:13

Whosoever cometh any thing near unto the tabernacle of the LORD shall die: shall we be consumed with dying?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

17:8-13 While all the other rods remained as they were. Aaron's rod became a living branch. In some places there were buds, in others blossoms, in others fruit, at the same time; all this was miraculous. Thus Aaron was manifested to be under the special blessing of Heaven. Fruitfulness is the best evidence of a Divine call; and the plants of God's setting, and the boughs cut off them, will flourish. This rod was preserved, to take away the murmurings of the people, that they might not die. The design of God, in all his providences, and in the memorials of them, is to take away sin. Christ was manifested to take away sin. Christ is expressly called a rod out of the stem of Jesse: little prospect was there, according to human views, that he should ever flourish. But the dry rod revived and blossomed to the confusion of his adversaries. The people cry, Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish! This was the language of a repining people, quarrelling with the judgments of God, which by their own pride and obstinacy they brought upon themselves. It is very wicked to fret against God when we are in affliction, and in our distress thus to trespass yet more. If we die, if we perish, it is of ourselves, and the blame will be upon our own heads. When God judges, he will overcome, and will oblige the most obstinate gainsayers to confess their folly. And how great are our mercies, that we have a clearer and a better dispensation, established upon better promises!

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

A new section should begin with these verses. They are connected retrospectively with Numbers 16; and form the immediate introduction to Numbers 18. The people were terror-stricken by the fate of the company of Korah and by the plague. Presumption passed by reaction into despair. Was there any approach for them to the tabernacle of the Lord? Was there any escape from death, except by keeping aloof from His presence? The answers are supplied by the ordinances which testified that the God of judgment was still a God of grace and of love.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

13. cometh any thing near—that is, nearer than he ought to do; an error into which many may fall. Will the stern justice of God overtake every slight offense? We shall all be destroyed. Some, however, regard this exclamation as the symptom or a new discontent, rather than the indication of a reverential and submissive spirit. Let us fear and sin not.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Any thing near, i.e. nearer than he should do; an error which we may easily commit.

Shall we be consumed? will God proceed with us in these severe courses, according to his strict justice? will he show us no mercy nor pity, till all the people be cut off and destroyed with dying one after another.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Whosoever cometh anything near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die,.... They who before were so bold and daring as to think the priesthood was common to them with Aaron, or they had as good a right to it, and might go into the sanctuary of the Lord where he did, are now so frightened at the rod being laid up as a token against them, that they thought they must not come near the tabernacle at all, and, if they did, would be in the utmost danger of death:

shall we be consumed with dying? such violent deaths, until there are none left of us? but the Syriac and Arabic versions render the words affirmatively; we are near or about to be consumed; and so the Targum of Onkelos, lo, we are to be consumed; which agrees best with the preceding clause, for they would scarcely make a question of what they had affirmed.

Geneva Study Bible

Whosoever cometh any thing near unto the tabernacle of the LORD shall die: shall we be consumed with dying?

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

13. shall we perish all of us?] The exact force of the words is doubtful. They may mean ‘Shall we completely come to an end by expiring?’ of which R.V. is a correct paraphrase: or ‘Shall we ever finish expiring?’ i.e. ‘can we ever be free from the danger of death’ if we approach the Tent?

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 13. - Shall we be consumed with dying? It was a natural question, considering all that had happened; and indeed it could only be answered in the affirmative, for their sentence was, "In this wilderness they shall be consumed" (chapter 14:35). But it was not in human nature that they should calmly accept their fate.



Numbers 17:13

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

This miracle awakened a salutary terror in all the people, so that they cried out to Moses in mortal anguish, "behold, we die, we perish, we all perish! Every one who comes near to the dwelling of Jehovah dies; are we all to die?" Even if this fear of death was no fruit of faith, it was fitted for all that to prevent any fresh outbreaks of rebellion on the part of the rejected generation.