Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 1-2.

Today’s passage, and the Book of Numbers begins with God commanding Moses to take a census of the fighting men of the Israelites.   Moses did as God commanded and counted them by the tribe to which they belonged.  However, the Levites were not counted in this census, meaning that the Israelite army was composed of twelve units (one for each tribe counted in the census).  Once the census was completed Moses arranged the Israelite camp around the newly constructed tabernacle.  By setting up this default arrangement, less administrative work was needed each time they moved to a new place as each of the tribes knew where they should go relative to where the tabernacle was set up.  Once again the Levites are left out of this arrangement.  Now, one could easily dismiss this, since the Levites were camped around the tabernacle itself.  However, I think we should notice that this “twelve and one” arrangement resembles that of Jesus with His Twelve Apostles.  There are two things I want to say about this.  First, I believe that Jesus chose Twelve Apostles in order to mimic this arrangement.  Second, there is significance in the “twelve and one” arrangement beyond just the parallel between the Tribes of Israel and Jesus with the Twelve.  I am not quite sure of what it is, but we should pay attention to its appearance in the Bible.

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