Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 22-24.

The first thing which struck me today was that Balak did not need to confront the Israelites.  At the time Balak chose to send for Balaam, the Israelites were camped by the Jordan river across from Jericho.  Now, in his defense, he was afraid that such a large group of people would consume all of the available resources, leaving Balak’s people to starve.  As I thought about it some more, I believe that Balak knew the Israelites planned to cross the Jordan, but was afraid that they would strip the land before they did so.  Balak did not know of the power of the God whom the Israelites worshiped and so was unaware that, unlike any other nomadic army in history, the Israelites did not need to live off of the land.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 19-21.

There is a lot I could write about in today’s passage, but I want to think about Moses’ striking the rock.  When the Israelites arrived in the Desert of Zin, there was no water for them there.  Which immediately led the people to once again to protest against Moses’ and Aaron’s leadership.  Moses and Aaron immediately do the right thing and appeal to God.  God tells Moses to speak to the rock in front of all Israel and it will begin providing them with water.  Now, the previous time a situation like this had arisen, God had instructed Moses to strike the rock to get water from it.  So, this time Moses once again strikes the rock, but that was not what God had told him to do.  God had told Moses to just speak to the rock.   The first problem with what Moses did is that he acted like he brought forth water by striking the rock, when it was God who brought forth the water.  By striking the rock, Moses acted as if it was the act of striking the rock which caused it to bring forth water, making his action similar to witchcraft.  God does not perform miracles because we follow the correct ritual.  The second problem with what Moses did was that he did not have enough faith to believe that God would bring forth water from the rock if he only spoke to it.  Both of these are problems common to the human condition.  We all struggle with thinking that if we can just find the correct ritual God will have to do what we want.  And we all struggle with having enough faith to do as God instructs and trusting Him to take care of the rest.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 16-18.

My first thought when reading this was that we had just had the negative consequences of those who refused to follow Moses’ direction and now, here we have some other people challenging his authority?  Then I thought about the repeated times in my lifetime when people have seen an idea fail, badly, and as soon as the dust settles begin advocating for it again.  But that, in and of itself, is not what this passage is about.  So, I decided to look at what was wrong with what Korah and his allies wanted.  Korah claims to be advocating on behalf of the entire people of Israel.  He claims that he wants to establish a system where all of the people are equal before God, as opposed to Moses “lording it” over them.  However, if we look at his group, we see people who have risen to positions of minor power uniting to overthrow Moses in the name of “the people” and seize power for themselves.  We see this pattern repeated time and again throughout history: leaders arise who claim to be opposing the “tyrannical” government on behalf of the people, but really only seek power for themselves.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 14-15.

Today I want to comment on the fact that the ten men who explored the Promised Land but spoke against going into it died of a plague after the Israelites refused to enter the land based on their report.  A straight up reading of the passage suggests that their deaths contributed to the Israelites changing their minds and attempting to invade the land the following morning.  It makes me wonder if there was a connection between what they did while they were exploring the land, their fear of invading the land, and the plague which killed them.  We know from the passage that the last two were connected,. but what about that first one.  From other passages, we know that Joshua was devout in his faith in God.  We know from Caleb’s promotion of the invasion here and his speech when he claimed his part of the land that he also was enthusiastic in his faith in God.  On the other hand, we do not know much about the other ten spies.  So, today when I read about them dying of plague it occurred to me that perhaps they caught the plague by participating in some of the “detestable practices” of the people of the land (I put detestable practices in quotes because that term is used by the Bible to describe the practices of the people living in the land without going into detail).  That led me to wonder if perhaps the reason they testified against invading the land was because of the things they did while exploring the land.

One of the things which I have learned over the years is that many of the most vehement atheists are people who have made lifestyle choices which are condemned by God.  They reject the idea of God rather than admit that they have made bad choices.  In the same way, I wonder if the ten spies who were afraid of invading the Promised Land abandoned their faith in God rather than admit to themselves that they had sinned when they took part in various practices among the people of the land.  Perhaps they had dallied with temple prostitutes, or maybe they had eaten non-kosher foods as part of sacrifices to idols.  Either of those might possibly have given them a disease which led to their death.  My point here is that perhaps the reason these ten men did not have faith that God would help the Israelites overcome the people of the land was because they did not want to admit to themselves that violating His commands was a bad thing to do.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 11-13.

The first thing I thought about when I read today’s passage is that skeptical historians hold that the Exodus could not have happened as described by the Bible because the Sinai Peninsula could not have supported a group of people as large as the one recorded here and elsewhere in the Bible.  That position relies on the belief that miracles do not happen.  This passage makes it clear that God miraculously provided for the Children of Israel while they were in the wilderness.  However, I want to focus on Moses appointing seventy elders at God’s command.  Previously, Moses’ father-in-law had told him that he needed to delegate some of the task of managing the Israelites to others.  Nevertheless, when we get to this passage, Moses is still taking the full burden on himself, which leads him to beg God to give him help, or to take his life.  In response, God told Moses to bring together seventy elders and leaders of the people and God would pour out His Spirit upon them.  Two of the seventy whom Moses appointed did not come to the meeting of the elders which Moses called.  Nevertheless, God poured His Spirit out on those two when He poured it out on the other sixty-eight.  All seventy began prophesying when God’s Spirit came upon them.  Joshua wanted Moses to stop the two who had not joined the others at the tent of meeting, but Moses refused.  Moses replied that he wished God would pour out His Spirit on all of His people.  We should wish the same today.  Or more precisely, we should wish that off of God’s people accept His Spirit being poured out upon them and into them.  Further than that, I wish that all of the people I know, and even the people I do not know, would accept God’s Spirit.

I want to add a note that I believe there is a connection between Moses choosing seventy elders and Jesus sending out seventy disciples (some manuscripts say seventy-two, but the parallel to here makes me think it was seventy).

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

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

A few days ago, I wrote about the fact that when Moses counted the Levites to determine who was available to work in the care and maintenance of the tabernacle he only counted the men between the ages of thirty and fifty.  In today’s passage. Moses, in accordance with God’s command, purified and set aside the Levites for service to God, particularly in the care and maintenance of the tabernacle.  However, when God gave Moses instruction on who should do the work of the tabernacle, He specified that men of the tribe of Levi should begin doing the work in the tabernacle at the age of twenty-five and retire from actively doing the work at fifty.  Then God told Moses that Levites over the age of fifty could continue to assist their brothers in performing their duties, but they should no longer do the work.  I am not quite sure what is meant by that, but I think it means offering advice on the best way to carry out the duties, helping to resolve conflicts in the course of carrying the work, and training the younger men who were just starting out.  I believe this passage reinforces what I wrote about the Levite census.  It adds two things for our consideration.  Young men should be encouraged to become active in doing the work of the Church when they reach twenty-five years of age, and older men should step back and encourage younger men to take over leadership roles.  Older men should seek to provide advice and training to younger men as those younger men seek to do God’s work.  Again, this does not mean that older men should not do God’s work if no one younger is available, but they should seek out and encourage younger men to do the work…and under no circumstances whatsoever should they allow themselves to be perceived as standing in the way of younger men doing the work.

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.

After completing the census of all males twenty years old and older for the rest of the Israelites, Moses conducted two censuses of the tribe of Levi.  In the first of these censuses Moses counted every male a month old or more.  The result of this census was 22,000, making the tribe of Levi the smallest tribe by a wide margin.  This number worked out for the best because God chose the Levites as redemption for the first-born sons of the rest of Israel.   The first-born sons were God’s because He spared them when He killed all of the first-born sons in Egypt on the first Passover (there is significance in that worth talking about, but it is not what I feel led to write about today).   Upon completing the reconciliation of the number of male Levites with the number of first-born male of all of the Israelites, Moses conducted a second census of the Levites.  This second census was of all of the Levite males between the ages of thirty and fifty.  This second census of the Levites was to count those who would come to serve in the work of the tabernacle.  While I do not believe that we should think that the work of the Church should be done only by those in that age range, we should recognize that the bulk of the work of the Church probably will be done by those in that age range.  Or, perhaps I should say, something is wrong when that age range is not doing the bulk of the work of the Church.

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.

The Book of Numbers begins with the account of the census which Moses took of the Israelites.  The census was a count of the men 20 years old and older, except for the Levites who were excluded from this census.  Interestingly, this passage is one of those places where the Israelites are divided into thirteen groups, twelve plus one.  The tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim are counted along with the other ten tribes, and the tribe of Levi is set aside as separate and different.  A few years ago I was struck by how this “twelve plus one” division of the tribes reflects the twelve plus one nature of Jesus ministry on earth where He traveled around with His twelve Apostles.  I have never reached a conclusion about the meaning of that comparison, just noted it for future reference.

The previous paragraph was meant to be an aside before I got to my main point (which is not any more ground breaking).  I have had a perception about the relative sizes and significance of the tribes of Israel.  For example I always thought that the tribes of Judah and Ephraim were large and important and that the tribes of Dan and Benjamin were small, and not very important.  Yet, when a look at the census results I see that the tribe of Ephraim had only 40,500 men counted, only the tribes of Benjamin and Manasseh had fewer men in this census.  While the tribe of Dan had 62,700 men, second in size only to the tribe of Judah.  Not only that, but the twelve tribes were divided into four camps and one of the tribes was designated as the lead for that camp.  Dan was designated as lead for one of the four camps.  So, not only was the tribe of Dan much larger relative to the other tribes than I thought, it was one of the more important tribes.  None of this is particularly important, but it shows how we need to read the Bible carefully because some of the general impressions we have do not reflect what the Bible actually says.

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.

Here we have an example of the idea that leaders need to avoid the appearance of impropriety when making an important decision.  In this case, Eleazar and Joshua were to divide the land up among the remaining nine and a half tribes by lot.  However, they were to be assisted by someone from each of the tribes receiving land.  This allowed input from each of the tribes.  Perhaps as importantly, each tribe had a representative present to see that the division was done impartially.  There was one other aspect of the way in which the land was divided which I want to comment on.  The Levites were scattered among the other tribes.  They were to be given towns withing the inheritance given to the other tribes.  The number of towns given from each of the other tribes was to be in proportion to how much land was given to that tribe.  This spread those who were to dedicate their lives to learning and teaching God’s Law throughout the land.

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