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

After the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests, God had Moses consecrate the Levites into service to God in place of the firstborn males of the rest of Israel (thus cementing their status as intermediaries between the rest of Israel and God).  Once that was done, it was time to celebrate the Passover.  So, the Israelites did so.  However, some of the Israelites were unable to celebrate the Passover because they were ceremonially unclean.  However, they wanted to celebrate Passover and asked Moses what they should do.  We can learn an important lesson from their enthusiasm for worshiping God and celebrating what He had done for them.  Finally, after those who were unable to celebrate the Sabbath at Mount Sinai at its appointed time were able to celebrate it according to the instructions God gave for such circumstances, the Israelites set out from Mount Sinai.

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.

Today’s passage covers the vow of the Nazirite.  Every time I have read it in the past I felt like I was missing something.  The passage tells us that if anyone wants to make a vow of dedication to the Lord as a Nazirite they needed to follow the rules laid out here, but it does not tell us any more about what it means to take such a vow.  However, as I read it today I realized that the purpose of taking the Nazirite vow was to publicly declare that you were dedicating yourself to God.  So, you would dedicate yourself to spend a period of time to work on some task in service to God.  For the length of time you had chosen to work on that task you would follow the rules of the Nazirite. Then when the time was over you would follow the rules given for ending your vow.  Other reasons for taking the vow might be as a form of penance for some action which you regret, or as a show of changing your life.  I think the modern Christian Church would do well to have a better understanding of Nazirite vows.  The Apostle Paul took a Nazirite vow twice after his conversion.

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.

Having completed the census of the men twenty years and older of the rest of the tribes of Israel, God commanded Moses to take a census of the Levites.  However, this census was to be of the males one month old or older.  Once that was done, God commanded that Moses count all of the firstborn sons of all of Israel.  According to the count there were 22,000 Levite males a month or older and there were 22,273 firstborn males in all of Israel.  Since God had saved the Israelites from the loss of their firstborn in the plague which led to them being able to leave Egypt, He counted the firstborn as His.  He took the Levites as His in place of the firstborn sons.  This is a place where once again the account runs counter to the idea that this was written later.  I would think that if this account was not based on an actual event that the counts of total Levite males and total firstborn males would have matched up exactly to “reveal” God’s great power in so arranging things.  Once arrangements had been made to redeem the firstborn sons of Israel one month old or older who were in excess of the number of Levite males one month old or older, God commanded Moses to count all of the Levite men between the ages of thirty and fifty.  These were the men who would be serving to maintain the tabernacle and its furnishings.  I think this provides us with a model we should seek to emulate.  While we should not exclude those older, or younger, than that thirty to fifty age range, we should seek for the bulk of the work of the Church to be done by those in that age range.

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.

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.

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

As part of his final instructions to the Israelites before his death, Moses laid out the borders of the land they would inherit in Canaan.  He, also, assigned Eleazar and Joshua to assign the portions of that land to the various clans and tribes of the Israelites.  Then, Moses assigned one leader from each of the tribes who had not already been given land east of the Jordan River to assist Eleazar and Joshua.  I find it interesting that this reads to me like the division would take place in the near future, yet Joshua did not undertake this process until well into his time of leadership.  Further, we learn in the Book of Judges that the tribe of Dan did not claim their land until well after Joshua’s death.  I am not quite sure why these two accounts of how the land was divided read so differently.  When I read the Joshua account carefully I am not sure it does not describe the same process as described here, just from a different perspective.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 32-33.

When I started to read today’s passage my first thought was about how Moses thought that the Reubenites and Gadites were trying to get out of fighting for land west of the Jordan when they asked that the land of the Amorites be made their inheritance.  In the past I thought that Moses had completely misunderstood their intentions.  As I have thought about it longer, I think that the Reubenites and Gadites did think that they might be excused from fighting across the Jordan if they took the land already conquered on its eastern bank.  However, I also think that Moses was mistaken in thinking that they asked for it in order to avoid the fighting.  So, when Moses put the idea of not joining the battles west of the Jordan in the context of failing to follow God’s commands and shirking their responsibility to the rest of the Israelites, they quickly clarified their request.  So, this passage illustrates the importance of making expectations clear.

Having written all of the above, I want to point out something we tend to gloss over about this passage.  The Reubenites and Gadites were the people who requested land east of the Jordan.  Yet, Moses also gave some of that land to the tribe of Manasseh.  No explanation is given for why some of the tribe of Manasseh settled east of the Jordan River, while the rest of that tribe crossed over the Jordan and settled there.

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.

Reading Moses’ instructions on oaths to the Children of Israel you could think that he was making women second class citizens.  Moses says that if a man takes an oath, he is bound by that oath.  On the other hand, if a woman takes an oath, her father, if she is not yet married, or her husband, if she is married, can negate that oath.  However, that misses an important element of Moses’ instructions here.  First, I want to point out that the woman’s father, or husband, must forbid the oath as soon as he learns of its existence.  If he does not do so immediately, the oath is binding and he must support her in keeping it.  If the woman’s father, or husband, forces her to violate the oath after failing to override it immediately upon learning of it, he bears the consequences of breaking the oath.  It is important to bear in mind that, in that society, a father or husband had the ability to prevent a woman from keeping most of the oaths which she might make.  Further, Moses instructed that  a woman who was widowed or divorced, that is, a woman who had control over her material goods and actions, would be bound by any oath or pledge which they entered into.  So, without Moses’ regulation regarding oaths and pledges taken by women who had yet to marry or who were married, no one would have entered into business dealings with them.  Without Moses’ regulation, a woman could enter into an agreement to provide something in return for goods or services, receive those goods or services, then, when it came time to provide the goods or services which were promised, her father or husband could have just denied her permission to transfer those goods or services to the other party.  Whereas, with Moses’ regulation, all that the person doing business with the woman needed to do was make sure that her father or husband was aware of the agreement.  If they did not cancel the agreement before goods or services were transferred to her, her father or husband was bound to allow her to pay for 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 27-29.

When God told Moses that he would shortly die without entering into the Promised Land, Moses’ first response was not to beg God to reconsider.  His first response was to ask God to appoint someone to lead the Children of Israel in his place so that they would not be like sheep without a shepherd.  The first thing which came to me when I read that was what Matthew wrote in chapter nine of his Gospel account.

36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

I am confident that Matthew was making the same connection.  God’s immediate answer to Moses’ request was to have him appoint Joshua, Moses’ disciple, to lead the people.  God split Moses’ responsibilities between Joshua, who handled the military and other secular leadership functions, and Eleazar the priest, who was responsible for the spiritual and religious leadership functions.  However, as Matthew repeatedly pointed out, God’s long term answer to Moses’ request was Jesus of Nazareth, who once again combined all aspects of leadership over God’s people into one man.

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.

Immediately after Balaam blessed the Israelites rather than curse them on behalf of Balak, the Moabite women began inviting Israelite men to join them in the worship of Baal of Peor.  This worship apparently involved sexual acts, and my reading of this passage leads me to believe that the Israelite men joined the worship of Baal in order to indulge in those sexual acts.  As a result of their worship of Baal of Peor, a plague broke out among the Israelites.  The plague led the Israelites to assemble before the tabernacle to call upon God for forgiveness and healing.  While they were so assembled a man from the tribe of Simeon brought a Midianite woman, to whom he was not married, passed the assembly and into his tent for sex.  This behavior indicated that those who were doing this had a brazen disregard for what others in the community thought of their behavior, or even for the consequences of their behavior for others.  When Aaron’s grandson killed this man and the woman he was dallying with, the passage tells us that the plague ended, but not before it killed 24,000 Israelites.   I had suggested that perhaps the plague which killed the ten unfaithful spies was a sexually transmitted disease.  In this passage I am confident that the plague mentioned was a sexually transmitted disease.

Now, this passage starts by telling us that the Moabite women invited the Israelite men to join their worship of Baal, but the woman who was killed at the end of the incident was a Midianite.  And, God told Moses they should treat the Midianites as enemies because of this incident.  I am unsure how we should interpret this.  However, the biblical references to the Midianites suggest that they were either a nomadic people, or a people who settled in among other peoples in the area, or perhaps both to varying degrees.  If that is correct, perhaps when opposition arose to Israelite men partaking in the worship of Baal Peor they stopped being able to go into Moabite towns to do so, but Midianite women came to them to continue the practice.

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