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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 8-10.

    I am struck by the logistics of the people of Israel as a nomadic people. In today’s passage the dedication of the Levites is described. The first step in that process was that someone (I read that someone as Moses, but it is possible that it was not limited to Moses) was to sprinkle them with the water of purification. We know from an earlier chapter that there were 22,000 Levite males one month and older. Even if the dedication only included the men between 25 and 50 years of age it was still a very large number of people. Another step in the process was that the people of Israel were to lay their hands on the Levites being dedicated. Again from earlier in Numbers we know there were over 600,000 fighting men among the people of Israel. The image of them all being assembled for this ceremony of dedication is overwhelming. Thinking about conducting a ceremony with this large number of people is mind boggling.

    When it came time to celebrate the second Passover, the first one in memory of the rescue of the Israelites from Egypt (the first Passover was part of that rescue), some of the men of Israel were ceremonially unclean. However, they still wanted to celebrate this event. So Moses went to God and asked what they should do. The answer Moses received was that those who were unable to celebrate the Passover for legitimate reasons at the appropriate time should celebrate it one month later. The interesting thing here is that these men did not view celebrating the Passover as an onerous ritual which they were glad to get out of. Rather it was something they wanted to do and were disappointed that they were unable to celebrate. We should have a similar attitude towards our various worship services.