Passage Research
Numbers 17 — Sermon Preparation
Twelve staffs, one per tribe, are placed before God overnight; only Aaron's — representing Levi — sprouts, blooms, and bears almonds, confirming the priestly line. Below is a research summary for Numbers 17, drawn from openly licensed scholarly databases — original-language morphology, classic sermons from the church fathers through the Puritans, and ancient geography data.
- 28
- verses
- 395 / 132
- Hebrew words / lemmas
- 6
- classic sermon excerpts
- 4
- preachers & commentators
Numbers 17 in the Hebrew
Distinctive vocabulary of this chapter, based on original-language morphology.
| Hebrew | Transliteration | Strong's | Count | Glosses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| מַטֶּה | maṭṭeh | H4294 | 17 | branch, extending |
| מֹשֶׁה | Môsheh | H4872 | 17 | Mosheh |
| אַהֲרוֹן | ʼAhărôwn | H175 | 12 | Aharon |
| אֹהֶל | ʼôhel | H168 | 6 | tent |
| דָבַר | dâbar | H1696 | 7 | arrange, speak |
| מַחְתָּה | machtâh | H4289 | 4 | pan |
| עֵדָה | ʻêdâh | H5712 | 5 | assemblage, concourse |
How preachers through history handled this text
6 public-domain excerpts on Numbers 17, from the church fathers to the Puritans.
“Enough had been done in the chapter before to quash all pretensions of the families of the tribe of Levi that would set up in competition with Aaron, and to make it appear that Aaron was the head of the tribe; but it seems, when that matter was settled, the princes of the rest of the tribes began to murmur. If the head of a tribe must be a priest, why not the head of some other tribe than that of Levi? …”
— Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 1 (Genesis to Deuteronomy), on Numbers 17:1–30 (Public Domain)
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