Bible Strands
Numbers 16:14
Moreover, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey or given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you gouge out the eyes of these men? No, we will not come!”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Dathan and Abiram address Moses during the rebellion, rejecting his assertion that God delivered them from Egypt and refusing to ascend to the promised territory.
The words — ha.Vi.'o.Ta./nu (you have brought us) directly contests Moses' report of the Exodus, while za.Vat (flowing) characterizes the land's agricultural abundance.
The thread — The description of a land flowing with milk and honey echoes Leviticus 20:24, and the threat to gouge out eyes mirrors the physical violence recorded in Judges 16:21.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to recognize a direct rejection of divine promise and human leadership, couched in a violent metaphor used to justify refusal.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Moreover thou hast not brought us into a land that floweth with milk and honey, or given us inheritance of fields and vineyards: wilt thou put out the eyes of these men? we will not come up.
Cross-references
- Leviticus 20:24 But I have told you that you will inherit their land, since I will give it to you as an inheritance—a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the peoples.
- Numbers 36:8 Every daughter who possesses an inheritance from any Israelite tribe must marry within a clan of the tribe of her father, so that every Israelite will possess the inheritance of his fathers.
- Judges 16:21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze shackles and forced to grind grain in the prison.
- 1 Samuel 11:2 But Nahash the Ammonite replied, “I will make a treaty with you on one condition, that I may put out everyone’s right eye and bring reproach upon all Israel.”
- Exodus 3:8 I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
- Exodus 3:17 And I have promised to bring you up out of your affliction in Egypt, into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’
- Exodus 22:5 If a man grazes his livestock in a field or vineyard and allows them to stray so that they graze in someone else’s field, he must make restitution from the best of his own field or vineyard.
- Exodus 23:11 but in the seventh year you must let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor among your people may eat from the field and the wild animals may consume what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and olive grove.
- Numbers 20:5 Why have you led us up out of Egypt to bring us to this wretched place? It is not a place of grain, figs, vines, or pomegranates—and there is no water to drink!”