What Does Numbers 26:10 Mean in the King James?
And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up together with Korah, when that company died, what time the fire devoured two hundred and fifty men: and they became a sign.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The dead become a raised signal: the earth’s swallowing and the fire’s consuming end in a sign that remains visible.
THE MEANING
The earth opens, the company is swallowed, and fire consumes two hundred and fifty men; their fate is named a sign. The warning remains readable beyond the moment of destruction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that what is swallowed or burned simply disappears: here those deaths remain publicly legible as a sign.
THE ROOT
לְנֵס
lenēs
GROWS FROM
נסס
n-s-s
Raise or display conspicuously as a signal.
The word נֵס (nēs) can mean a banner or standard raised into view, as well as a sign. The verse makes the destroyed company a public signal: the catastrophe remains visible in the meaning assigned to it.
ALSO GROWS
nēs: Banner, standard, or raised signal.
נֵס
Isaiah 11:10 uses this word for an “ensign”; that concrete sense of a visible signal sits beneath “sign” here.
lehitnōsēs: To be displayed or raised as a signal.
לְהִתְנוֹסֵס
Psalm 60:4 uses this related verb for a banner being displayed; here the company’s fate is what remains on display.
THE PATTERN
A catastrophe becomes a lasting signal when its trace is carried forward for others to read.
The censers of these sinners against their own souls, let them make them broad plates for a covering of the altar: for they offered them before the LORD, therefore they are hallowed: and they shall be a sign unto the children of Israel.And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.THE THREAD
Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.Both verses use the root בלע (b-l-ʿ, “swallow”): the earth takes the company here, while a great fish takes Jonah into its belly. Numbers names death as the outcome; Jonah names enclosure and survival, so the shared root echoes without flattening their different outcomes.
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