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

I have always found the account of the bronze serpent which Moses made confusing, especially considering that Hezekiah later destroyed it because the Israelites were worshiping it.  However, Jesus suggests that it foreshadows His crucifixion.  Which means we need to look at what this account tells us about our relationship with God.  So, let’s look at the context of this event.  Aaron had died shortly before this and the Israelites were being forced to go around Edom.  By going around Edom it seemed like the goal of the Promised Land was even further away.  They began to feel like they would never get there and they lost their patience with Moses and with God.  They became focused on their hardships rather than with what God had done for them so far.  They stopped thinking about the ways in which God had cared for them and focused on their lack of good things.  In a way, they had forgotten how bad things had been in Egypt and were thinking they would have been better off if they had remained in Egypt.  In fact, they seemed to feel like things could not be worse.  Then things got worse.  The people immediately realized their mistake, repented, and asked Moses to pray for them.  Moses prayed and God told him to make the bronze serpent and put it on a pole.  When people looked  up at it, they were healed from snakebites.  The bronze serpent caused people to look up and think about God rather than continuing to look down and think about their problems.  Let us look up and think abut God, rather than about our problems.

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.

It is not clear how long after the Israelites refused to enter the Promised Land and Moses turned them back into the wilderness that Korah’s rebellion occurred.  Perhaps it occurred immediately after the Israelites defeat, or perhaps it was some time later.  We also do not know what specific instruction from Moses triggered this rebellion, although the words attributed to Korah and to Dathan and Abiram suggest that the rebellion was in response to some instruction from Moses.  Reading this again it almost appears like there were two separate rebellions against Moses at the same time.  The passage lists three leaders of the rebellion, Korah, a Levite, and two Reubenites, Dathan and Abiram.  It also lists that there were 250 other men, who were leaders among the Israelites who followed these three.  However, when I read how this got resolved it reads to me like those 250 men were followers of Korah and as if Dathan and Abiram had  some additional followers of their own.  Moses called for Korah and his followers to come before the Lord and, together with Aaron, present an incense offering, allowing God to decide whose offering to accept.  Moses also summoned Dathan and Abiram to come to this “showdown”, but they refused to do so.   So Moses went to them.  It reads that Moses said that the earth would swallow up the tents and all of those within the encampment of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and that it did so.  Then fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men offering incense.  That reads to me like there were followers of Dathan and Abiram in addition to the 250 followers of Korah, although I am unsure of that.

The thing I noticed today was the similarity between what happened to Korah’s 250 followers who burned incense and what happened to Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, when they burned incense before the Lord using coals to light the incense which did not come from the altar.  Presumably, these 250 men would also not have had access to coals from the altar in order to light the incense which they offered.  Of course, one would also presume that they were aware of what had happened to Nadab and Abihu.  Which makes one wonder how they did not suspect that something bad would happen when they burned incense before the Lord.  But it also reminds us that we often fail to learn from the suffering which others have brought upon themselves.  How often o we rebel against those whom God has placed in authority over us?  We often spend time concerned about recognizing when leaders abuse or overstep their authority, but we do not spend enough time looking at whether or not we adequately submit to those whom God has appointed to lead us.

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.

When the Israelites heard the reports from the spies, they listened to the ten with negative reports rather than to the two, Caleb and Joshua, who argued that God would give them the land.  The other ten spies argued that the people of the land were too powerful for the Israelites.  Caleb and Joshua did not argue that the other ten were overestimating the people of the land.  Their argument was that they were underestimating God.  The first lesson we learn is that just because the overwhelming majority believe an argument does not make it the right choice.  Ten out of twelve argued, “We can’t attack the people of this land.  They are too strong for us.”  Two argued, “But they are not too powerful for God.”  We must not allow ourselves to make the same mistake that the Israelites made.  We must never believe that our God is not strong enough to overcome the obstacles to what He has promised us.  After all, the Israelites had witnessed what God did to bring them out of Egypt.  They had witnessed what He had done during their time so far in the wilderness, despite their repeated disobedience to Him.  I have seen God’s power, I will believe that He can deal with whatever is between me and that which He promises me.

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.

There are a lot of things which I thought about writing about in today’s passage.  It starts with the people complaining about their hardships and God causing fire to break out on the edges of the camp.  Then it mentions how the people were worked up to be upset about the food which God provided, which led Moses to feel overwhelmed and ask God to give him help leading the people.  Then there is the incident where Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because he had taken a Cushite as his wife.  Finally, there is the account of the twelve spies who spied out Canaan; ten of whom spoke against going into the land.  However, I was struck by the fact that it was here that Moses changed the name of Hoshea son of Nun to Joshua.  We don’t often notice this because throughout most of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers it usually refers to him as Joshua.

The first thing I want to write about is why does the author of Numbers even mention that he was once known aa Hoshea.  One possibility is that the list of the twelve spies was copied from another source, and it was only after listing Joshua as Hoshea in his copy of the list that the author realized the discrepancy and needed to explain it.  Another possibility is that Moses changed Hoshea’s name after he returned and the writer chose to tell us that here, while otherwise generally referring to him as Joshua, since that was the name the people he was writing for knew Joshua as.  However, none of that is why I thought this was worth writing about.

What I find noteworthy is the meaning of the two names.  Hoshea means “salvation”, while Joshua means “The Lord is salvation”, or “The Lord saves”.  The writer does not make clear when Moses changed Hoshea’s name to Joshua, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think it matters.  I suspect that it was sometime after the spies returned, which would explain why he was in the list of spies as Hoshea.  In any case, this name change is important.  The first is because Joshua led the Israelites to establish God’s kingdom in the land of Canaan, and Jesus (the Greek transliteration of Joshua) who established God’s kingdom on the earth for all people.  Second, if Joshua had still been Hoshea when he led the Israelites into Canaan, there would have been those who would have been tempted to worship him in place of God.  Some would have said that the man Hoshea was their salvation, but Joshua’s name gave credit to God.

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.

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.