Numbers 17:5

Hebrew Bible

3 You must write Aaron’s name on the staff of Levi; for one staff is for the head of every tribe. 4 You must place them in the tent of meeting before the ark of the covenant where I meet with you. 5 And the staff of the man whom I choose will blossom; so I will rid myself of the complaints of the Israelites, which they murmur against you.” 6 So Moses spoke to the Israelites, and each of their leaders gave him a staff, one for each leader, according to their tribes—twelve staffs; the staff of Aaron was among their staffs. 7 Then Moses placed the staffs before the Lord in the tent of the testimony.

Ezekiel 7:10

Hebrew Bible

8 Soon now I will pour out my rage on you; I will fully vent my anger against you. I will judge you according to your behavior. I will hold you accountable for all your abominable practices. 9 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare you. For your behavior I will hold you accountable, and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, who is striking you. 10 “Look, the day! Look, it is coming! Doom has gone out! The staff has budded, pride has blossomed! 11 Violence has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left—not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence. 12 The time has come; the day has struck! The customer should not rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for divine wrath comes against their whole crowd.

 Notes and References

"... Ezekiel uses the sabbath commandment of Exodus 31:13 twice in chapter 20, to indicate that by the sabbath, YHWH has sanctified Israel and YHWH is Israel’s God (the latter Ezekiel’s addition). He also adds that Israel must “sanctify my sabbaths” (compare Ezekiel 44:24), an injunction found previously only in the Decalogue (Deuteronomy 5:12; compare Jeremiah 17:22, 24, 27). Ezekiel has literally “to play the whore away from (one’s husband),” used elsewhere only in Hosea 9:1, and “turn away from”, used elsewhere only in Jeremiah 32:40, with Numbers 15:39 so that Israel’s whoring heart and eyes, which in the Numbers passage presumably abandon God’s commandments (for what is not mentioned), turn, in Ezekiel’s phrasing, specifically from God to idols. Ezekiel’s parody of Numbers 17 also extends to the word matteh ‘rod’, which, in view of mutteh ‘perversion of the law’, is defined here by Ibn Janah as injustice ..."

Milgrom, Jacob Leviticus 23-27: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (pp. 2358-2359) Doubleday, 2001

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