Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 27-29.

I’m not sure where I am going with this, but I find the order of narrative here interesting.  We would not recount the events this way.  So, you understand what I mean I am going to summarize what the writers tell us over the last few and next several chapters.  At the end of chapter 25, we were told that God told the Israelites to treat the Midianites as enemies.  In chapter 26, we were told that Moses and Eleazar, Aaron’s son, conducted a second census of the Israelite men who were 20 years old or older.  So far that makes sense, if you are about to go to war you need to now how many fighting men you have. Then at the end of the census we learn that everyone who had been counted in the first census had died, except for Caleb and Joshua (Moses and Eleazar were alive during that first census, but they were Levites and were not counted).  The census leads to the daughters of Zelophehad bringing up what should happen with their father’s inheritance in the land since he had no sons.  Since the ruling about what should happen with a man’s property if he did not have a son was important, and the incident which led to it being addressed happened here, we would have likely included it here, but we would have made it more parenthetical.   After that Moses asks God to appoint someone to take over leadership of the Israelites since he will soon die.  That also makes sense here, since such a leader should lead the Israelites into battle while Moses is still alive and they are about to enter into battle against the Midianites.  Finally, Moses restates the offerings to be made throughout the year with a bit more detail than in the previous descriptions.

It’s that last bit that we today would have done differently.  In our imagination of the correct way to tell the account, we would have either said something about how Moses gave these other commands before they went into battler.  Or, more likely, we would think that the account of the battle against the Midianites should be explained first.  Then after telling about the battle and its outcome, write that before the battle Moses told them about these sacrifices and festivals.  We might have even chosen to put the details of the census and Joshua being named as Moses’ successor after the battle as well.  All of that is because we view the battle and its outcome as being more important than the other elements of what happened.  The instructions concerning the sacrifices was necessary here and now because the Israelites who were about to go into battle had been too young when they were given the last time to have really paid attention.  We need to recognize that understanding the proper ways to worship God are every bit as important as battles and their aftermaths in understanding what is going on.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.