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

I have been writing a bit about how Israel was divided into “twelve and one” for the last little bit.  Today’s passage follows the account of how the twelve tribes (counting Joseph’s two sons and not counting the Levites) all gave identical offerings for the dedication of the tabernacle.  It begins with the Levites being given onto God as a wave offering by the rest of Israel.  Once again foreshadowing Jesus being offered for all of humanity.  Another interesting thing in this passage is what happened when the Israelites celebrated the second Passover.  Some of the Israelites could not celebrate the Passover because they were ceremonially unclean as a result of handling a dead body, but did not want to miss out on celebrating the Passover.  They came to Moses to ask what they should do.  The answer which God gave to Moses was that those who for some reason could not celebrate the Passover on its normally scheduled date should do so the following month.  In giving that answer, God reiterated the importance of Israelites celebrating the Passover and included instructions that the same laws should apply to foreigners living among the Israelites: the same laws should  apply to both the foreigner and the native-born.

Towards the end of the passage it refers to “Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law.”  Which led me to explore the complications about the fact that the Bible uses two or three different names for Moses’ father-in-law.  It first refers to him as Reuel when Moses first meets him in Exodus 2.  Then later, when Moses encountered the burning bush in Exodus 3, it says that the name of Moses’ father-in-law was Jethro.  Finally in Judges 4:11, it says that Moses’ father-in-law was named Hobab (we usually miss this because most translators follow the explanation I found for this and translate it as “brother-in-law”).  Since I touch on this with my parenthetical explanation, I will address Hobab first.  The phrasing in this passage and the phrasing in judges is slightly ambiguous due to the nature of Hebrew.  First, even in English we could read this passage as saying that Reuel is the grandfather of Moses’ wife, but the translator chose to put a comma in to suggest that Hobab is Moses’ brother-in-law rather than his father-in-law.  Second, the Hebrew word for “father-in-law” and the Hebrew word for “brother-in-law” are written using exactly the same letters (Hebrew does not have letters for vowel sounds), with the difference in pronunciation being noted with marks similar to how English does punctuation and my understanding is that even that is an “innovation” introduced into Hebrew long after both Exodus, Numbers, and Judges were originally written.  Which brings us to Reuel and Jethro.  Well, like most, if not all, names in the Hebrew language, these both have descriptive meaning.  Reuel means either “friend of God” or “shepherd of God”, while Jethro means “excellent”.  Either, or both, of these could have been titles, or maybe even names given by others (similar to nicknames, but with more formality than what we mean by calling something a nickname), for Moses’ father-in-law.  For that matter, his name might have been Hobab, but he started going by these other designations when he gave his son the same name as himself.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 5-6.

I thought about writing about the law of jealousy, how it seems very cruel and barbaric.  Unless you believe in the power of God.  In which case, you see how, while the “bitter water” the woman must drink if her husband accuses her of infidelity, the odds of anything bad happening are rather low, and that is assuming that God will not miraculously intervene to reveal His judgement.  I also thought about writing about the Nazirite vow, but I really did not have any thoughts for which I felt any passion.  Then I read the blessing which the priests were to say over the Israelites.
The Lord bless you
    and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine on you
    and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn His face toward you
    and give you peace.
This really struck me.  As I read it, I wanted to memorize it and make it my farewell when I say goodbye to people I may not see for a few days or longer. Actually, I think I may try to start saying it to my wife each day before I leave for work.  We should pray these sentiments about those we love (and since Jesus tells us that the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor, and that everyone is our neighbor, that should be everyone).  So, I am going to strive to do just that: pray these sentiments about those whom I encounter.

The Lord bless you
    and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine on you
    and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn His face toward you
    and give you peace.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 3-4.

The Book of Numbers is called that because it begins with the men of Israel being numbered, with a census of the men of Israel.  The first two chapters details the number of men of military age from the twelve tribes, aside from the tribe of Levi.  Then in chapters three and four it recounts the numbering of the men of Levi.  Actually, there are two separate counts of the men of Levi.  The first such count is all of the males a month old and older.  In addition to counting the males of Levi, they counted the first born males from every tribe who was a month or older.  The purpose of this count was to remind the Israelites that the first born males of Egypt died on the night of the first Passover, while those of the Israelites were spared.  Because of that, God claimed the firstborn males as His.  However, God allowed the Levites to redeem the males of the other tribes.  Which once again foreshadows what Jesus would do.  First, as I wrote about yesterday, we had the division of the people of Israel into twelve and one.  Then we have the Levites being claimed by God to redeem the firstborn males of all of the rest of Israel.  The Levites redeeming the firstborn of all of Israel, foreshadows Jesus redeeming all of mankind.

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

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

Last year when I read this passage I took note of the way in which God divided the Israelites up into twelve plus one tribes.  Moses counted all of the men 20 years old and older who were able to serve in the military from twelve of the tribes, but not from the tribe of Levi.  Then he set those twelve tribes to camp three tribes to a group, with each group camping in one of the cardinal directions from where the tabernacle was set up each time they camped.  The Levites camped immediately around the tabernacle.  All of this led me to see this set up as foreshadowing Jesus and His disciples.  I find it interesting how we got to this situation of the people of Israel being divided into twelve plus one.  The idea of the people of Israel being composed of twelve tribes originates with the fact that Jacob had twelve sons.  However, then Jacob adopted Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh as his own.  This led to there being thirteen tribes.  Yet, as we read the Bible it never talks about thirteen tribes. It only ever talks about the twelve tribes of Israel.  And when it talks about the twelve tribes it either counts the Levi and Joseph as members of the twelve, or it leaves Levi and Joseph out and counts Ephraim and Manasseh.  And in that latter case, the Levites are presented as the caretakers of the tabernacle or the temple, as intermediaries with God.  All of this makes me think that God set this up to foreshadow the relationship between Jesus and His Apostles.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 34-36.

I struggled with what to write about today’s passage until the second or third time I read this verse:

Anyone who kills a person is to be put to death as a murderer only on the testimony of witnesses. But no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.

It struck me that this represents an important principle that applies to how we look at others.  The principle here is that we should not believe something negative about someone unless those telling us saw them do it.  Even then, we should not believe it if there is only one person who saw it, even if we are that one person.  We need to remember that sometimes what we see is not what happened.  Our view may have been obscured, or something relevant to events may have happened before we started looking.  Or, maybe our own bias has caused us to interpret someone’s action incorrectly.   So, we need to give people the benefit of the doubt.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 30-31.

God tells Moses that his last act as leader of the Israelites will be to take vengeance on the Midianites for what they did at Peor.  This could lead one to think that the writer of this passage mixed things up, because in chapter 25 it says that the men of Israel indulged in sexual immorality with Moabite women.  Although the entire incident ends when Phinehas killed an Israelite man who brought a Midianite woman to his tent.  In addition, in this chapter Moses tells the Israelite commanders that the Midianite women followed Balaam’s advice to entice the Israelites to be unfaithful…and Balaam had been called to the area to curse the Israelites by the king of Moab.  To further complicate matters, Moses’ father-in-law was a priest of Midian and Moses spent 40 years living with him.  However, we get an insight into the situation when we discover that Balaam was killed among the Midianites.  Finally, the passage tells us that the Israelites burned all of the towns where the Midianites had settled as well as their camps.  So, it reads as if some of the Midianites, those that followed the five kings mentioned here, had settled in part of Moab, among the Moabites.

When I started writing this today, I thought writing about this would lead me to some spiritual insight about the passage, but that did not happen.  However, I still feel like I gained something of value from this exercise, even if I did not find a lesson to apply to my life today.

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

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

When God told Moses that his days were coming to an end, Moses asked God to appoint someone over the community so that “the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.”  As I read that today I was reminded of what Matthew wrote about Jesus in chapter 9 verse 36

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Which is entirely appropriate, since Jesus is the Greek transliteration for Joshua, and it was Joshua whom God appointed over the community.  Matthew wrote that after Jesus saw the people as being like sheep without a shepherd, He told His disciples that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, so they should ask the Lord of the harvest to send more workers.  Here Moses asked God to send someone to go out and come in before His people, someone to lead them out and bring them in.  God told Moses to give authority to Joshua before the people.  Jesus told His disciples, and through them us, to lead His people and to seek out those whom God had sent to do likewise.  Moses had been teaching Joshua how to lead God’s people for many years at this point.  Or, to put it another way, Moses had discipled Joshua.  In the same way, Jesus sent His disciples out to disciple people of all nations.  Moses laid his hands on Joshua and commissioned him to lead God’s people.  In the same way, we should accept whatever leadership role God has called us to, and then we should lay our hands on those God brings to us and commission them.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 25-26.

After the failure of Balak’s plan to have Balaam curse the Israelites, the Moabite women began seducing the Israelite men.  It is not clear if the men took part in the worship of Baal of Peor because it involved sexual activity, or if they took part in illicit sexual affairs with Moabite women and then joined them in worship of Baal afterwards.  I lean towards the former, but can see an argument for the latter.  In any case, those Israelite men who were conducting these sexual liaisons in blatant violation of the sexual laws already laid down became so brazen that one of them brought a woman to his tent past the assembly of the people who had met to decide how to address the issue.  The whole incident ended when Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, killed the man who flaunted his disobedience and disrespect before the entire community, and the woman with whom he committed these acts.  The assembly had decided that those within their midst who had yoked themselves with the Baal of Peor by having sex with women who were part of that cult.  This man decided to challenge that edict.  Phinehas did not hesitate to act.  By doing so, he ended a plague which took the lives of 24,000 Israelites (probably a sexually transmitted disease).  Phinehas acted decisively.  When the Church has reached a decision on an issue, we should act with similar decisiveness (although I do not think the Church should be making decisions to take people’s lives).

I want to make one other point about this story.  This story clearly identifies the Israelite man whom Phinehas killed, and the woman who was killed along with him.  It gives both of their names, and their lineage.  Typically, when a story like this is made up, the people involved, other than the “hero” of the story, are only vaguely identified: “an Israelite man”, or “a Midianite woman”.  The story starts off that way and one might start to think, “Oh, this story was just made up”, even though the specific individuals who m Phinehas killed is not important to the story.  Then, when the story is complete, the writer goes, “Oh, by the way, it was these two specific people.”  The fact that the name and lineage of each of the people killed was given provides evidence that this account was not just a story made up to explain something.  It actually happened and the people who first told the story actually knew the people involved.

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