Numbers 16:28

28 And Moses said: "By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own will.

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 And he spoke to the congregation, saying, "Depart now from the tents of these wicked men! Touch nothing of theirs, lest you be consumed in all their sins."

27 So they got away from around the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; and Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents, with their wives, their sons, and their little children.

28 And Moses said: "By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own will.

29 If these men die naturally like all men, or if they are visited by the common fate of all men, then the Lord has not sent me.

30 But if the Lord creates a new thing, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord."