And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them: The Hebrew verb for gathered and the noun for assembly come from the same Hebrew root (q h l; see the comments on verses 4 and 8).

Hear now, you rebels: Now renders the Hebrew particle naʾ, which makes the imperative here stronger. Moses calls the people rebels when in fact it is he and Aaron who are now the true rebels, for which they will be punished (so Olson, page 129). The Hebrew word for rebels refers to people who resist or protest against some established authority. In the Old Testament this negative reaction is usually manifested against God.

Shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?: This is a rhetorical question. Moses is annoyed at the people’s disbelief. Good News Translation expresses more clearly that Moses is angry by saying “Do we have to get water out of this rock for you?” Other languages will have different ways of expressing Moses’ anger; for example, Chewa has “Say, must we do this and cause water to come out this rock for you?” Milgrom (pages 448-456) argues that Moses’ sin is his presumptuous claim that it is he and Aaron who will bring the water from the rock, rather than God. The Hebrew word order puts special emphasis on the phrase out of this rock since it occurs first in this question, which is literally “From this rock shall we bring forth for you water?” The demonstrative pronoun this is used to refer back to the same rock mentioned in verse 8.

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .