Found an interesting textual difference in my devotional reading this morning in Numbers 2.

In the ESV, we read:

whereas in the NASB, NKJV, and others (including the Geneva and AV) we find something more like "around the tent, some distance from it" or perhaps just "around the tent" or "far off from the tent".

I'm wondering about the ESV choice to say "facing the tent" - since it's the only translation that I've found that translates the underlying text that way, I wonder why they made the choice. Anyone with some Hebrew experience that might be able to shed light on the reason?

My thought when reading it was that if the Lord commanded the camps to "face the tent" - if in fact that's a correct rendering of the Hebrew - it could be a significant statement, since you would expect a wandering people, passing through hostile territory, to have the men of war encamped around the point of central importance facing toward danger. If correct, I would be wondering about whether God was making a point about HIM being their protection by commanding them to NOT do what an encamped army would normally do in order to better protect themselves.

Probably this is a minor point anyway, but I thought the translational difference was interesting.

__________________
Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://semperubi.rtrc.net

"Many men, after a long conversion, see more of the workings of sin in their hearts than ever they did before or at their first conversion. Now, such men have not an increase of sin, but an increase of illumination and light" (Christopher Love)


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