lun

This is the everyday verb for stopping somewhere overnight. A traveler reaches a place at sundown and stays until morning; a guest is given a roof for the night; an army camps before the next day's march. The picture is always temporary and practical, the pause between one stretch of journey and the next.

From that plain base the verb stretches in two directions. It can soften into simply remaining or being at rest in a place, so that righteousness can be said to have once lodged in Jerusalem, dew rests on a branch, and the faithful soul rests secure in good. At its most intense it means to settle in and abide, as when the worshipper takes lasting shelter in the shadow of the Almighty. Ruth's famous pledge uses this verb on purpose: she promises not one night but a whole shared life, and the word carries no hint of anything improper, which is exactly why it fits a vow of loyalty.

A cluster of laws turns the verb's overnight sense into a rule: certain things must not be left to stay through the night. The fat of a feast offering, the Passover meat, a hired worker's wages, and the body of an executed criminal all must be dealt with before morning, as if letting them linger overnight would let impurity or injustice harden into something permanent.

This lodging verb has nothing to do with the look-alike verb for grumbling (the second meaning below). They share the same three letters but belong to different word histories, and every ancient translation kept them strictly apart.

This is a different word that happens to be spelled like the verb for lodging. It is the signature term for Israel's rebellion in the wilderness: the people complain against Moses and Aaron, and through them against God himself, regretting that they ever left Egypt and accusing their rescuer of bringing them out to die. It is not honest lament or a fair grievance brought to God in trust; it is the closed, resentful muttering of people whose faith has collapsed into suspicion. The complaint is often low and rumbling rather than open protest, a discontent that spreads through the camp.

The word carries a weight far out of proportion to how seldom it appears. It clusters almost entirely in the rebellion stories of Exodus and Numbers, yet it sets the pattern for a whole biblical theme: the people grumble, God judges, a leader intercedes, and the punishment is softened, only for the cycle to begin again. Later Scripture looks back on this grumbling as the model of unbelief.

In its causative form the verb means to stir others up to grumble, to spread the complaint to the whole community. The scouts who brought back a bad report of the promised land did exactly this, making the entire assembly grumble, and Scripture treats them as the ringleaders who bear the heaviest guilt while the people who followed them bear a lesser share.

Not every use is condemned outright: when the community objected to the leaders' rash treaty with the Gibeonites, their complaint was arguably justified. The verb names the act of grumbling; whether it is sinful depends on the situation and on what is actually said.