Year: 2020

We get the boundaries for the promised land laid out in this chapter.  It is less about the tribes and what their territories will be and more about the territories themselves and the geographic boundaries that the new nation will represent.  It is in this chapter where the leadership is laid out for Israel with Eleazar and Joshua each taking their respective places.  Eleazar is the chief priest and Joshua takes up the civic and military duties.  The other names that are listed represent the leaders of each of the tribes.

We are coming to a close in the book of Numbers and soon we will find ourselves inching towards I and II Kings.  It will be interesting to see how God never really wanted to have a king to lead the people, because there is such a temptation to make the king as close to god as anyone on the face of the earth.  That is what happened with all the tribes around them, so God wanted to avoid that.  But we see that the transition from judges to kings that God relents and gives the people what they want.  

We find ourselves with a detailed summary of the movements of the nation of Israel from the time that they left Egypt up to the time that they were about to, but had not yet, entered the promised land.  It is the wilderness journey remembered and it is a journey which took 40 years to accomplish.  There are 42 stages described here in Numbers.  Makes sense, since the book in which these stages are written is called numbers.  

We see an interesting detail  in vs.2 where we find that Moses wrote down the stages and the starting points and the details of the tribes.  Remember, as we have said earlier, we do not posses, we do not have, there does not exist that we know of, an original copy of what Moses wrote down.  This book of Numbers has been passed down in oral and then written form for centuries.  I just don’t want people to think that when it speaks about Moses writing down these details that somewhere in a vault there is the original copy which we can use to compare to what we currently have.  

We see a similar summary of these events in Deuteronomy 1:1-3:28.  I do find it interesting that what I consider one of the most powerful events and most iconic events of the early Israelite history, the crossing of the Red Sea, is just mentioned in passing.  Also, the miraculous provision of the manna and the quail isn’t even mentioned.  Neither is the presence of God in a cloud or a pillar of fire.  The author here was very circumspect in what he included in the details.  Just the facts.

We have a bit of a twist to the previous declarations from God that no one will cross into the promised land before the generation that fled from Egypt had died.  We actually get a specific age of 20 which we didn’t have before.  We see that anyone who was 20 and over when they left Egypt will not enter into the promised land, while those who were younger than 20 when they left Egypt would be able to enter the land.

But there were a couple of tribes who wanted to enter early into the promised land because their cattle wanted/needed more land and there was great land for their cattle in the area called the Transjordan, or across the Jordan.  They made a deal with Moses, which was basically making a deal with God.  Moses accused them of being opportunists thinking that they would wait for the other tribes to clear out the enemies and then they would just skate in and take the land that was promised to them.  

They said no, here is a compromise.  We promise to be a vanguard, those who go ahead of all the others and we will be the ones who battle the enemies as a sign that we are not afraid to enter the land and do battle even if our ancestors did say that we should not enter the land.  We  will wait to take over our land and settle in our land until all the other tribes of Israel have already settled in place.  That seemed like a good idea, Moses was happy with it, the people were happy with it, and so, it seems, that God was happy with it as well.  So now we begin to occupy the promised land after these many years in the wilderness.

We transition from the rules commanding the sacrifices to a situation where God is asking Moses to go into battle and telling him exactly how many troops and what his strategy ought to be when he goes into battle.  So they went to battle against the Midianites and they won, as we would expect.  They also brought back some booty to Moses in order to show what exactly they had done and how they had conquered.  With Moses in the battle is Eleazar who is now the high priest and the grandson of Aaron.  We  saw him before.

Well, Moses was not pleased that they had kept the women alive because they were part of that time when the men of Israel had turned their back on God to pursue the women of Midian and Eleazar had driven a spear through that Israelite man and that Midianite woman.  So, all the women were killed except those who had not slept with an Israelite in the past.  I know, hard to follow  and hard to stomach.  

But remember this was in order to ensure that the people of Israel were pure and that they had everything that they needed in order to be obedient to God, and to pass that obedience on to their children.  All was divided and so the chapter ends.

It should be fairly obvious that the role of women in the Old Testament was very different from the more egalitarian structure which we have today in our society.  Women simply were not able to make decisions, or vows on their own without the approval of either their fathers or their husbands.  The only women who were able to make decisions on their own were those who were either divorced or widowed.  This chapter describes the state in which women were to be in regards to decisions.

We begin the chapter simply by stating that when a man makes an oath he is bound to it, no ifs, ands or buts.  He has to do what he promises he is going to do.  “He shall not break his word.”  But when a woman makes a pledge…, well, that’s a different story.  She isn’t bound to a pledge if she makes it and her father or her husband hears her make it and then contradicts her.  She is not bound to it.  Just in case she says something that she really hasn’t thought through, I know, not nice.

But if the husband or dad is present and she makes a vow and they don’t say anything to contradict it then it is good to go and she is good to go.  Basically silence means approval on the part of the men. These were the guidelines that Moses  gave to the leaders of Israel even while God gave Deborah the power to preside, judge, and rule the nation of Israel.  But even Deborah is described in light of who is her husband, as she is described as the wife of Lappidoth.  But you can’t get away from the fact that she was able to make decisions for the entire nation of Israel without her husband ever being mentioned.

We have in this chapter one more round of sacrifices that are to be made on specific festival days.  Let’s lift up the festival of booths which begins in vs.12 and takes us all the way to the end of the chapter.  This is a religious celebration that was supposed to last 8 days, and each day had its own specific sacrifice that was to be made to commemorate the festival of booths.  Remember, this was a festival when they were to remember the time that they lived in the wilderness as wanderers in a foreign land.  The reference to this is also found in Leviticus 23.  But God commanded the people of Israel to live in booths during this time to remember their time in the wilderness.

It is interesting because Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was right on the heels of the festival of booths and it is thought that the people were able to get the palms from the roofs of the booths that the people were living in during this festival.  But remember, these verses in Numbers would predate that event by millenia so the two are not related, except by the fact that in Jesus’ day they still celebrated this festival.

I remember when I was at Swarthmore that during this festival of booths time period there were students who would observe it and build their booths and spend time in them to meditate and pray and to remember that they were called by God to take the time in their Jewish heritage and faith to remember this time in their historical and religious background.  It always impressed me the faith and the willingness for these students to do something on campus which pointed directly at their faith even in the midst of an institution of higher learning which tended to be somewhat adversarial to any faith in general which demanded action that could be interpreted as defying reason.  But isn’t that the nature of faith in general?  

So here is a chapter that you are probably wondering what does this have to do with anything in my life?  I don’t take part in any sacrifices and these types of animal offerings are not a part of my religious life or my faith in any way, shape, or form.  You would be correct in making all of those statements.  This is a chapter that teaches the people of Israel how important it was to be disciplined in the offerings which were given to the Lord and that these offerings needed to be consistent and needed to be taken seriously.  Each one was different as each season and each festival of the year was considered unique and had its own offering.

Christians have never taken part in animal, much less human, sacrifices.  We believe, as Hebrews 10:1-18 states clearly that “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all (vs.10).”  We do not have to offer any other sacrifices in order to satisfy God or in order to purify ourselves because the single sacrifice of Christ was sufficient to redeem us from our sins and to cleanse us from our unrighteousness.  Those are powerful and heady theological truths that we have received as children of God.  

So what we have before us is a reminder of the way that things used to be.  What we have in front of us in Hebrews and all of the New Testament, is the new covenant which no longer requires those sacrifices which are described.  But it is good to know our past in order to understand how we have arrived at where we are today.

We begin this chapter with an occurrence in the history of Israel which was very important and also very unique to the people of Israel.  Go back to chapter 26:33 and you will find a man named Zelophedad son of Hepher.  His claim to fame was the he had five daughters and their names were: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.  We pick up their story again in the first verses of this chapter.

Their father died and left behind no sons so if one were to interpret the laws which Moses was told to follow in regards to the distribution of the land, these five sisters would be without land because there were no brothers who were able to inherit it.  They appeal to God and ask that they would be able to inherit some of the land of their uncles and count it as their land since it was their father’s land.  God agrees and so the law is changed to accommodate those families that did not have sons in order to make sure that all families and their names would be able to be carried forward.  That is pretty remarkable for Old Testament stuff.

From there we move to the appointing of Joshua as Moses’ successor.  Notice in vs.18-21 where Moses is told to lay his hands upon him in the company of all the people so that all the people would be able to see that Moses was approving and imparting his power and the presence of God which used to be in him, upon Joshua.  It was a very powerful ascendancy ceremony which left no doubt as to who the new guy would be once Moses left office.  We  find in vs.23 that Moses commissions him in front of the whole congregation by laying hands on him.  

We find ourselves once again in a list of genealogy, but there is something that I want you to notice about this list that we haven’t seen in the previous lists.  This list contains historical insights into which tribe did what, and each of these insights normally includes a moment in the family’s history when they were not faithful to what the Lord required of them.  Look at vs.9 which speaks of the earth swallowing up this family.  This scene we already looked at in chapter 16.  We also see in vs.61 the recounting of the scene where Levi’s sons offered unholy fire before the Lord.  The result of these historical occasions inserted into these census numbers, were the reduction of the size of the family.

It is also interesting to see a comparison of this census to the one that was taken in chapter 1 before a whole lot of shaking went on.  Remember we have lost a bunch of Israelites to the earth opening up, to battles, to plagues, to serpents and so on.  The number given in this chapter is 601,730 compared to chapter 1 the number was 603,550.  

Another major change was that in the past when God had promised the land flowing with milk and honey each family got a certain size of land based upon the preference of the Lord.  Now we find in vs.52-56 that the land which the new generation will inherit once the old generation has died off, is based upon the drawing of lots and not upon preference.  That is also a big deal and quite different from before.  We are reminded of the fact that only Joshua and Caleb will be able to enter the promised land from the old school.

I am somewhat conflicted with the question of whether or not people should marry those of different religions.  I have had many discussions with folks about this, but Scripture, in both the Old and the New Testament seem to prohibit it.  There is an incredibly practical side to this which reminds us that when you are “unequally yoked” then what ostensibly should be the most important thing to you you do not have in common.  It is hard to overcome that barrier.

That was happening in Israel.   The Israelities were marrying Midianite women and things were not going well for the Israelities.  It was easier to follow along with what everyone else was doing, worshiping other gods, than to try to follow what just the Israelites were doing, worshiping only one God.  Moses calls the people together and as they are about to start the meeting some dude sneaks in with a Moabite woman to make things happen in his tent.  Everyone saw it, and maybe they thought it was no big deal and just let it slide.

That didn’t happen.  The grandson of Aaron, Phineas who was a priest at this time, saw this and he could not take it.  He took a spear and went into their tent and drove the spear into both of them at once.  This is not something they teach you in seminary, how to kabob your enemies.  But somehow he was able to do it.  This sign of zeal for the Lord impressed the Lord so much that God stopped the plague that was invading the camp because of their unfaithfulness.  

There is something about being filled with the zeal of the Lord which allows you to do things you didn’t think you would be able to do.  Now, we, of course, have to be exceptionally careful to not condone violence in the name of the zeal of the Lord.  That simply is not something we can ever imply especially in this 21st century.  But what else could we do in the name of the zeal of the Lord which would please God?  What could you do today in the name of the zeal of the Lord which would please God, and also not harm your neighbor?