Numbers 11:15

15 If this is how you [are] going to treat me, please kill me immediately if I find favor in your eyes, and do not let me see my misery."

Numbers 11:15 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 11:15

And if thou deal thus with me
Let the whole weight of government lie upon me, and leave the alone to bear it:

kill me, I pray thee, out of hand;
take me out of the world at once, or "kill me now, in killing" F14; dispatch me immediately, and make a thorough end of me directly:

if I have found favour in thy sight;
if thou hast any love for me, or art willing to show me a kindness, to remove me by death, I shall take as one:

and let me not see my wretchedness;
or live to be the unhappy man I shall be; pressed with such a weight of government, affected and afflicted with the wants of a people I cannot relieve, or seeing them bore down with judgments and punishments inflicted on them for their sins and transgressions I am not able to prevail upon them to abstain from: so the Targum of Jerusalem,

``that I may not see their evil, who are thy people;''

so Abendana, and in the margin of some Hebrew copies, it is read,

``this is one of the eighteen words, the correction of the scribes;''

who, instead of "my wretchedness" or evil, corrected it, "their wretchedness" or evil; but Aben Ezra says there is no need of this correction.


FOOTNOTES:

F14 (grh an yngrh) "occide me nunc occidendo", Drusius; "occide me jam, occide", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

Numbers 11:15 In-Context

13 From where do I have meat to give all these people? They weep before me, saying, 'Give us meat and let us eat!'
14 I am not able to carry all these people along alone; they are too heavy for me.
15 If this is how you [are] going to treat me, please kill me immediately if I find favor in your eyes, and do not let me see my misery."
16 And Yahweh said to Moses, "Gather for me seventy men from the elders of Israel whom you know [are] elders of the people and their officials; take them to the tent of assembly, and they will stand there with you.
17 I will come down and speak with you there; I will take away from the spirit that [is] on you, and I will place [it] on them; and they will bear the burdens of the people with you; you will not bear it alone.
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