Numbers 11:15

WEB

If you treat me this way, please kill me right now, if I have found favor in your sight; and do not let me see my wretchedness."

KJV

And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.

Commentary

And if thou deal thus with me,.... Let the whole weight of government lie upon me, and leave the alone to bear it: kill me, I pray thee, out of hand; take me out of the world at once, or "kill me now, in killing" (n); dispatch me immediately, and make a thorough end of me directly: if I have found favour in thy sight; if thou hast any love for me, or art willing to show me a kindness, to remove me by death, I shall take as one: and let me not see my wretchedness; or live to be the unhappy man I shall be; pressed with such a weight of government, affected and afflicted with the wants of a people I cannot relieve, or seeing them bore down with judgments and punishments inflicted on them for their sins and transgressions I am not able to prevail upon them to abstain from: so the Targum of Jerusalem,"that I may not see their evil, who are thy people;''so Abendana, and in the margin of some Hebrew copies, it is read,"this is one of the eighteen words, the correction of the scribes;''who, instead of "my wretchedness" or evil, corrected it, "their wretchedness" or evil; but Aben Ezra says there is no need of this correction. (n) "occide me nunc occidendo", Drusius; "occide me jam, occide", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.