Numbers for Everyone

John Goldingay

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780281061273
• eBook ISBN: 9780281074181
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The third release in a major new series of guides to the books of the Old Testament written in an accessible and anecdotal style. The series is suitable for personal or group use and the format is also appropriate for daily study.

Who are the people of God?

Cowardly, contemptuous, distrustful, whining ingrates?

Are those the words that spring to mind when you think of a people set apart and named holy by God?

Hardly. And yet that is what the book of Numbers shows the people of God to be. Even so, God continues to be faithful to the unfaithful. He chastens them, protects them and continues to invest in them, allowing them to mature, over a period of forty years, into a hardy, trusting, courageous community of warriors ready to take the land he's promised them.

The sermons of Deuteronomy are preached on the eve of a confident and holy Israel's entry into the Promised Land. Moses reminds God's people of what they have been through, what's expected of them, what they can expect of God and what will happen in the future, depending on the choices they make. Most of all, he exhorts Israel to love and serve the Lord their God with all their heart, soul and strength, so that they will not only survive but thrive in their land.

Using personal anecdote, a witty and lively style, and drawing on his considerable theological knowledge, John Goldingay takes us deep into the unfolding story of the Old Testament. And, as he guides us in our understanding of these time-honoured words and the ancient world they describe, he helps us to apply what we read to our lives.

NUMBERS 1:1–2:34
Finding Yourself in Your Family Story

¹Yahweh spoke to Moses in the Sinai wilderness in the meeting tent on the first day of the second month in the second year after they came out of Egypt: ²“Make a count of the whole Israelite community by their kin groups, by their fathers’ households, with a list of the names of every male, one by one, ³from the age of twenty and up, everyone in Israel who can go out with the army. You are to record them by their troops, you and Aaron. ⁴Someone from each clan is to be with you, each the head of his father’s household. ⁵These are the names of the men who are to stand with you: for Reuben, Eliezer ben Shedeur; ⁶for Simeon, Shelumiel ben Zur-shadday; ⁷for Judah, Nachson ben Amminadab; ⁸for Issachar, Nethanel ben Zuar; ⁹for Zebulun, Eliab ben Helon; ¹⁰for the sons of Joseph: for Ephraim, Elishama ben Ammihud, for Manasseh, Gamaliel ben Pedahzur; “for Benjamin, Abidan ben Gideoni; ¹²for Dan, Ahiezer ben Ammishadday; ¹³for Asher, Pagiel ben Ochran; ¹⁴for Gad, Eliasaph ben Deuel; ¹⁵for Napthali, Ahira ben Enan. ¹⁶These are the people nominated from the community, the leaders of the ancestral clans, the heads of the companies of Israel.

[The rest of the chapter gives the count for each clan, to a total of 603,550; this omits the Levites, whose task was to look after the sanctuary. Chapter 2 sets out how the clans are to take their position as they march.]

My son Mark just came across a photo from exactly twelve years ago. My wife, Ann, and my mother are sitting at a picnic table; I am lying on the grass (“typically,” Mark said; I am not sure what to make of that). Somewhere in the vicinity are our other son, Steven, and his wife, Sue, because it is a family farewell party on the Sunday before Ann and I undertake the biggest move of our lives. Three days later (twelve years ago tomorrow, as I write), we will get on the plane for that strange flight that starts in mid-afternoon and leaves you in Los Angeles still in the early evening even though it is eleven hours later. Among the poignancies of the moment is the fact that Ann’s being wheelchair-bound means we will not be making the trip back across the Atlantic as other people do, and my mother’s being nearly ninety means she will not be making the trip to see us, so we have had to face the fact that we are unlikely all to be together again. Behind us in the photo is our house, in which you could see the marks of preparation for this move. We have pointed out to our sons that this is the time they have to collect any of the belongings they left there when they moved out, and what they did not collect has gone to the thrift store. Most of the belongings we intend to take were shipped some weeks ago so they would get there before us (they didn’t, but that’s another story). Now, we simply have to pack our actual suitcases.

At the beginning of Numbers, the Israelites encamped at Mount Sinai are about to resume the biggest move of their lives. It should take about eleven days to complete it, rather than eleven hours. Actually it will take astonishingly longer, for reasons that will emerge. The first ten chapters of the book concern preparations for this move.

The story so far has established that the move may involve some battles. They didn’t have to fight the Egyptians, and God has said nothing about fighting the Canaanites; God has taken responsibility for seeing the Canaanites off. But Abraham once had to go to battle to rescue Lot when he got taken captive in the context of war, and Moses and Joshua had to lead Israel in defending themselves against the Amalekites on the way from Egypt to Sinai. God sometimes enables the people of God to live in the world on the basis of extraordinary divine interventions but sometimes lets them live in that world on a basis not so different from the one everyone else uses. Jesus will both urge his disciples to be peacemakers and at the Last Supper tell them to buy a sword. It won’t be surprising if the Israelites need to fight again. So they are going to march as a fighting force.

It might still seem odd that the first thing Moses and Aaron do in preparing to leave Sinai is count their fighting men. In 2 Samuel 24 David gets in trouble for doing this, a difference that reflects how people are sometimes expected simply to rely on God (counting soldiers thus suggests lack of trust) but on other occasions to take responsibility for their destiny in the way other people do. And it is significant that here God, not Moses, commissions the count.

The story has another implication for people listening to it. Like most citizens of the United States or any other country, most of the listeners will never be involved in fighting wars. The kinds of wars Numbers will relate belong in the distant past, as the battles involved in conquering North America and gaining independence lie in the distant past for people in the United States. Yet they are part of the story that defines the nation as a whole.

Although Moses’ count involves only the fighting force, it is described as a count of the whole community. The people who belong to the twelve clans are not just the soldiers but the people of every age and both sexes. The whole community is about to undertake this journey, and there is another sense in which people listening to the story find themselves here not because they belong to a fighting force but because it is their family story. They all belong to Reuben, or Zebulun, or Dan, or one of the other clans. When they hear the name of their clan, it enables them to nudge one another and say, “That’s us!” It is their story.

Maybe there is another hint of this being their family story in a puzzling feature of the story. The fighting force comes to 603,550. With the women, the young people, and the old people, that implies a total community of two or three million. That is about the population of the whole of Egypt at this time. Canaan’s population was maybe 200,000. Never until the twentieth century did Palestine’s population come to two or three million. If the Israelites had proceeded like a wagon train, it would have been 2,500 miles long. Even with wagons ten abreast, it would be 250 miles long.

The problem here is not that God could not have provided such a large company with food and water; God could have done so. The problem is that the numbers are out of all proportion with the numbers of peoples in the area at this time. One reason may be that the numbers have come to be misunderstood. The word for thousand is also the word for company in Numbers 1:16, and elsewhere it can denote a family. If the community was about six hundred families, this would make more sense. Yet six hundred thousand would cover the Israelites over quite a number of generations, and the people listening to the story could see the figure as also covering them. It is as if they were there, taking part in the exodus, the covenant making, and the journey to Canaan.

They are described as clans, kin groups, and households. The clans are often referred to as tribes, but this term is misleading. Tribes suggests separate peoples (Israel itself is more like a tribe). The twelve clans are the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, who was also called Israel—physical descendants or people adopted into these clans. Each clan divides into kin groups, and each kin group, into households (I avoid the word family, which can also be misleading). A “father’s household” would be my wife and me, our two sons and their wives, and their children. Israelites might have more sons, though they would likely have lost some in childbirth or infancy (daughters would have married into other families). We would not be living eight thousand miles apart but in adjacent houses in the same village, farming our plot of land nearby. A “kin group” would include the households headed up by my brothers (if I had any). The village as a whole might include a couple of other kin groups from my clan, from whom my sons would have found their wives.

NUMBERS 3:1–5:4
God’s Claim on Levi

¹This is the line of Aaron and Moses at the time Yahweh spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai. ²These are the names of Aaron’s sons: Nadab, the firstborn, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. ³These are the names of Aaron’s sons, the anointed priests whom he ordained to serve as priests. ⁴But Nadab and Abihu died before Yahweh when they presented foreign fire before Yahweh in the Sinai Wilderness. They had no sons, so Eleazar and Ithamar served as priests in the lifetime of their father Aaron.

⁵Yahweh spoke to Moses: ⁶“Bring the clan of Levi forward and have them stand before Aaron the priest to assist him. ⁷They are to look after responsibilities for him and for the whole community before the meeting tent by doing service for the dwelling. ⁸They are to look after all the accoutrements of the meeting tent, the responsibility of the Israelites, by doing service for the dwelling. ⁹You are to give the Levites to Aaron and his sons; they are totally given to him from among the Israelites. ¹⁰Aaron and his sons you are to appoint to look after their priestly work; the outsider who comes near is to be put to death.”

¹¹Yahweh spoke to Moses: ¹²“Now. I myself am taking Levi from among the Israelites in place of all the firstborn, the first issue of the womb from the Israelites. The Levites are to be mine. ¹³Because every firstborn is mine. At the time I struck down every firstborn in Egypt I consecrated to myself every firstborn in Israel, human and animal. They are to be mine. I am Yahweh.”

[Numbers 3:14–4:49 goes on to record the various kin groups within Levi, with their numbers and their specific tasks in looking after the meeting tent and its transporting on the journey. Numbers 5:1–4 then deals with some taboos that the Levites and Israelites in general have to be aware of.]

Last night I was watching the “Extras” on the DVD of a movie called The Soloist, whose background is Skid Row in Los Angeles, ten minutes away from where I sit. It noted the contribution made by volunteers (of the kind I could be) to the needs of homeless people there. Just now I read an e-mail from our pastor reminding us that Saturday is another “work day” when members of the congregation are cleaning up the grounds around our church, disposing of weeds and brush, and so on, and I am wondering whether I should take part rather than sit at home writing Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone (you can e-mail me to tell me the answer). At least I shall take part when our church makes dinner at a local homeless shelter next week, and I shall thus miss the Episcopal party at the Dodgers game. And on Sunday I shall preside at the Eucharist; does that constitute my alternative contribution to the church’s work? And what about the coffee sign-up—should I put my name down for one Sunday? Another congregational e-mail exchange this week discussed the appropriate salary for our organist; and while members of churches sometimes fulfill the duties of janitors, secretaries, and receptionists, often churches employ people to do them.

There is so much to do, not just for the individual but for the church and the rest of the local community. So we allocate tasks to different people or groups. That is part of the background to the position of the Levites. As the Torah tells the story, the community has just built an elaborate meeting tent or portable sanctuary, a dwelling or place for God to stay in Israel’s midst. The story came in Exodus 35–40, many chapters ago but only a month ago chronologically. Building the sanctuary there was an odd thing to do, because now they have to carry it two hundred miles to Canaan. Fortunately God has thought of that. The Levites are going to carry it. Oh, thanks, say the Levites.

That is only a temporary task, though less temporary than they think. Fifteen miles a day, three weeks? No problem. It will turn out actually to be forty years, and rather more miles. But this is to get ahead of ourselves. The task will still be temporary, and the transportation task is not where Numbers starts. For the community listening to this story, the Levites’ role is the subsequent, ongoing one, looking after the sanctuary that has become the fixed temple in Jerusalem, not the moveable dwelling. The community might have looked after it by allocating each clan one month on duty; conveniently, there are twelve clans. Or it could have relied on volunteers or people who “feel called.” The building of it did rely on people volunteering and on the utilizing of gifts that God’s spirit had given people. But for taking care of the sanctuary and leading in worship, God has told Israel to set one clan aside.

This presupposes a principle running through Israel’s relationship with God. Everything belongs to God: place, people, time, things. Israel acknowledges this by directly giving over part of all these things to God: they give to God (and therefore hold back from) every seventh day, every seventh year, a tenth of the harvest, and the firstborn of the flocks. It would be appropriate to give their human firstborn, but instead God takes one of the clans, and does so for this task of looking after the sanctuary. There turn out to be 273 more Israelite firstborn than there are Levites, so Israel makes up for the difference by paying five shekels each (maybe six months wages for a laborer) to “redeem” them, to buy them back for ordinary life. That also conveniently gives the priesthood some resources for its work. The criterion for choosing Levi, the violence of their commitment to God when Israel made the gold calf (see Exodus 32) will seem strange to us, but that history might remind one not to mess with them, or rather not to mess with God. This chapter’s opening allusion to the Nadab and Abihu story (Leviticus 10) would issue the same reminder and remind the Levites themselves that leaders tend to fall into sin and that the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Levi himself had three sons, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, who gave their names to the three major kin groups within the clan. Kohath’s descendants included Amram, Moses, and Aaron’s father. The priestly work in the narrow sense is the responsibility of Aaron and his descendants (elsewhere the Old Testament gives different impressions about this, reflecting how things transpired at different points in Israel’s history). Levi’s other descendants are responsible for other aspects of looking after the sanctuary and its worship.

Meanwhile, God prescribes how the Levite kin groups are to camp around the sanctuary, thus guarding against other Israelites coming too close after having one drink too many. God also prescribes how the kin groups are to look after the transporting of the sanctuary when it has been dismantled, again to protect it from them and them from it. The summary statements in Numbers 5 about keeping the camp free of the taboos brought by eruptions and discharges and by contact with death relates to the broader need to keep the community a place where God can properly be present.

NUMBERS 5:5–31
Breaking Faith

⁵Yahweh spoke to Moses: ¹“Tell the Israelites: ‘If a man or woman does anything wrong to someone, thus breaking faith with Yahweh, the person is liable. ²They are to confess the wrong they did, make reparation for the amount involved, add one-fifth to it, and give it to the person wronged. ⁸If the person does not have a restorer to make reparation to, the reparation that is made belongs to Yahweh, to the priest, as well as the expiation ram with which he makes expiation for him. ³Every offering of all the sacred things that Israelites present to the priest is to be his. ⁴While for each person, his sacred things are to be his, what the person gives the priest is to be his.’”

¹¹Yahweh spoke to Moses: ⁵“Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘When a man’s wife goes off and breaks faith with him, ¹³and someone has slept with her but it was concealed from her husband and she has kept it secret, so she has defiled herself but there is no witness against her and she was not caught; ¹⁴or a jealous spirit has come ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Numbers 1:1–2:34: Finding Yourself in Your Family Story
• Numbers 3:1–5:4: God’s Claim on Levi
• Numbers 5:5–31: Breaking Faith
• Numbers 6:1–27: The Lord Bless You and Keep You
• Numbers 7:1–8:4: Provision for the Sanctuary
• Numbers 8:5–9:14: God’s Flexibility
• Numbers 9:15–10:36: The Journey Actually Begins
• Numbers 11:1–35: On Missing Garlic
• Numbers 12:1–15: Miriam the Prophet, Aaron the Priest, Moses the Teacher
• Numbers 13:1–14:38: A Spy Story
• Numbers 14:39–15:41: The Intentional and the Unintentional
• Numbers 16:1–17:13: Dealing with Ambition
• Numbers 18:1–19:22: Provision and Purification
• Numbers 20:1–13: One Fatal Mistake
• Numbers 20:14–21:3: Two Very Different Attitudes to War
• Numbers 21:4–35: Snakes, and Progress, and Another Attitude to War
• Numbers 22:1–23:4: A Story about Several Asses
• Numbers 23:5–24: God Doesn’t Go Back on a Promise
• Numbers 23:25–24:25: Beautiful Tents, Jacob
• Numbers 25:1–26:51: How It All Goes Wrong (Again)
• Numbers 26:52–27:11: Five Pushy Women
• Numbers 27:12–23: On Appointing a New Leader
• Numbers 28:1–29:40: Eating with God
• Numbers 30:1–16: Negotiations and Love Songs
• Numbers 31:1–34: Unfinished Business
• Numbers 32:1–42: On Mutual Support
• Numbers 33:1–34:29: Land, Promises, and Politics
• Number 35:1–36:13: Ensuring Justice
• Glossary