Numbers 16:28

28 Moses said to the people, "This is how you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these things and that it is not by my own choice that I have done them.

Numbers 16:28 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 16:28

And Moses said, hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent
me to do all these works
To bring the people of Israel out of Egypt, to exchange the firstborn for the Levites, to make Aaron and his sons priests, to give the Levites to them, and to set Elizaphan over the Kohathites, things which these men found fault with, and questioned his authority for doing them:

for [I have] not [done them] of my own mind;
or "not out of my heart" {q}; he had not devised them himself, and done them of his own head, and in any arbitrary way, without the will of God or any authority from him, as these men suggested.

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FOOTNOTES:

F17 (yblm al yk) "quod non de corde meo", Pagninus, Montanus.

Numbers 16:28 In-Context

26 He said to the people, "Get away from the tents of these wicked men and don't touch anything that belongs to them. Otherwise, you will be wiped out with them for all their sins."

27 So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Dathan and Abiram had come out and were standing at the entrance of their tents, with their wives and children.

28 Moses said to the people, "This is how you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these things and that it is not by my own choice that I have done them.

29 If these men die a natural death without some punishment from God, then the Lord did not send me.

30 But if the Lord does something unheard of, and the earth opens up and swallows them with all they own, so that they go down alive to the world of the dead, you will know that these men have rejected the Lord."