So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol …: See verse 30. This verse restates with greater detail and intensity the punishment of the rebels found in the previous verse. Verses 32-33 parallel Moses’ twofold prediction of their destruction in verse 30. So the translation should not imply a temporal sequence between verses 32 and 33. The conjunction So fits well at the beginning of this verse. The repetitive expressions of these two verses serve as a climax in the account that highlights the divine punishment that will befall all those who defy and rebel against the LORD and his chosen leaders.

And the earth closed over them is another way of saying “the earth … swallowed them up” (verse 32).

And they perished from the midst of the assembly: The Hebrew verb for perished may be rendered “vanished” (Good News Translation) or “disappeared” (New International Readers Version) in this context. Good News Translation omits the phrase from the midst of the assembly, perhaps because it is essentially repeated at the beginning of verse 34 with the phrase “all Israel.” However, all repetition in the Bible serves a particular communicative purpose. If that purpose can be duplicated by such lexical recursion in translation, then the form of the text should be retained. Here it emphasizes that the shocking punishment of the rebels occurred before the very eyes of many Israelites who may have been inclined to go along with them. What a graphic object lesson and warning that such sympathetic action would have led to a tragic end! The dramatic nature of the narrative description in verses 31-35 might call for the use of selected ideophones in some languages; for example, Chewa uses them in connection with the earth swallowing (uuuphu!) and fire completely consuming (psiti!) people all at once. For the Hebrew word rendered assembly (qahal), see 10.7.

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 .