Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
For some, when they had heard, did provoke - There is a various reading here, which consists merely in the different placing of an accent, and yet gives the whole passage a different turn: - , from , who, if read with the accent on the epsilon, ̀ , is the plural indefinite, and signifies some, as in our translation; if read with the accent on the iota, ́ , it has an interrogative meaning; and, according to this, the whole clause, ́ ; But who were those hearers who did bitterly provoke? ' ̔ ; Were they not all they who came out of the land of Egypt by Moses? Or, the whole clause may be read with one interrogation: But who were those hearers that did bitterly provoke, but all those who came out of Egypt by Moses? This mode of reading is followed by some editions, and by Chrysostom and Theodoret, and by several learned moderns. It is more likely that this is the true reading, as all that follows to the end of the 18th verse is a series of interrogations.
Should it be said that all did not provoke, for Joshua and Caleb are expressly excepted; I answer, that the term all may be with great propriety used, when out of many hundreds of thousands only two persons were found who continued faithful. To these also we may add the priests and the whole tribe of Levi, who, it is very likely, did not provoke; for, as Dr. Macknight very properly remarks, they were not of the number of those who were to fight their way into Canaan, being entirely devoted to the service of the sanctuary. See Numbers 1:3, Numbers 1:45, and Numbers 1:49. And therefore what remained of them after forty years, no doubt, entered Canaan; for it appears from Numbers 34:17, and Joshua 24:33, that Eleazar, the son of Aaron, was one of those who did take possession of Canaan. Should it be still said our version appears to be most proper, because all did not provoke; it may be answered, that the common reading, ̀ , some, is too contracted in its meaning to comprehend the hundreds of thousands who did rebel.
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