Numbers

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

Dennis T. Olson

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781611642582
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Numbers chronicles a community faced with many competing interests, groups, and issues, endeavoring to define itself and its mission in the world. Dennis Olsen offers readers a comprehensive interpretation of this often overlooked book. He provides a thoroughly contemporary reading of Numbers that enlightens the modern church as it navigates the contemporary wilderness of pluralism, competing voices, and and shifting foundations.

PART ONE

The Death of the Old Generation

NUMBERS 1–25

I. Obedient Beginnings: Preparation for the March of the Holy People of God in the Wilderness

NUMBERS 1–10

The first half of Numbers recounts the fate of the old generation of Israelites who had been eyewitnesses to the exodus out of Egypt and the covenant with God made on Mount Sinai. The birth of this first wilderness generation had been marked by a census list already back in the book of Exodus, chapter 1. There seventy people were counted among the twelve tribes of Israel who came down to Egypt (Exod. 1:5). The new census list of the twelve tribes of Israel that appears in Numbers 1 marks a major transition in the people’s wandering. They have been liberated from the bondage of Egypt. They have received God’s commandments and entered into a covenant with God at Sinai. Now with Numbers 1, this first wilderness generation is ready to organize and begin its march in earnest toward the promised land of Canaan.

This first section of Numbers in chapters 1–10 is dominated by a positive tone. The people of Israel obediently follow God’s instructions to prepare for the march from Sinai to the promised land. The twelve tribes of Israel undergo a census in which all warriors are counted and then organized into a four-sided military camp with three tribes on each of the four sides. Laws are given that preserve the holiness of the camp. The people dutifully prepare for a holy war against the Canaanite inhabitants of the promised land. These preparations for the journey through the wilderness dominate Num. 1:1–10:10.

Numbers 10:11–36 continues in this section with the actual inauguration of Israel’s march and the events of the first three days. The holy camp of God’s people sets out for the first time from the Wilderness of Sinai to the Wilderness of Paran. The first three days of the journey go smoothly and without incident. All seems to be moving according to God’s plan and desire. That favorable impression will linger only for a time, ending abruptly when we come to Numbers 11.

Numbers 1

Census of the Twelve Tribes: Grains of Sand, Stars of Heaven, and the Promises of God

The book of Numbers begins with the Israelites situated in the Wilderness of Sinai fourteen months after the exodus out of Egypt. God instructs Moses to carry out a census of the twelve tribes of Israel. Not all the people are to be counted in this census. The census is only for the males who are over twenty years of age who are able to go to war (1:2–3). One person from each tribe is selected to supervise the counting (1:4–16). The results of the census for each of the twelve tribes is reported in 1:20–46. The census records a grand total of 603,550 males over twenty years of age (1:46). The central concern of this first census in Numbers 1 is determining the number of fighting men who are available for battle. With the goal of entering the promised land looming on the horizon, the census here functions as a key preparatory step for the military conquest of Canaan.

The census in Numbers 1 is the first census of the people since leaving Egypt. The only previous full counting of Israel’s twelve tribes occurred back in Genesis 46; there the total number of the twelve sons of Jacob and their offspring is reported as seventy people. The book of Exodus repeats this list of Jacob’s sons and their families totaling seventy people in its opening verses. Exodus 1:6–7 then reports the death of Joseph and “all his brothers and all that generation” and the emergence of a new and greatly expanded generation. The census at the beginning of Exodus marks an entirely new generation as well as a major transition from a state of blessing and abundance to slavery and oppression (Exod. 1:11). These earlier census lists in Genesis and Exodus should alert us to the function of the census lists as markers of major turning points in the life of Israel as a people.

As we turn to the census in Numbers 1, we note that an important transition is being made from a band of freed but unorganized slaves into an organized and holy military camp preparing for battle and the conquest of the promised land. Order, leadership, assignment of duties, calculations of available resources, organization of the community, and future planning are all made possible by such a census taking. But there is much more at stake in this census than just community planning and development. In order to understand the full meaning of the census in Numbers, we need to return to the book of Genesis and to two critical issues involved in the study of the census of Numbers 1: (1) the lists of the names of the twelve tribes of Israel and (2) the high numbers reported in the census lists.

Continuity and Inclusiveness: The Lists of the Twelve Tribes of Israel

The earliest version of the names of the twelve tribes in Numbers occurs in Num. 1:5–15, in which leaders from each of the twelve tribes are chosen to supervise the counting. The names of the tribes are enumerated in a particular order as follows: Reuben (the oldest son and thus the first tribe listed), Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Gad, and Naphtali. Other lists of the twelve tribes in Numbers occur in 1:20–43; 2:3–31; 7:12–83; 10: 14–28; 13:4–15; and 26:5–51.

These tribal lists in Numbers apparently build upon earlier versions of the twelve-tribe list in the book of Genesis, most notably the narrative of the twelve sons of Jacob in Gen. 29:31–30:24. This genealogical story about the birth of the twelve tribe ancestors is probably rooted in a time early in Israel’s history when the genealogy functioned to express unity and interconnection among a diverse tribal community without any central ruler or government. With the rise of kings in Israel in the tenth century B.C.E., the genealogical lists of the twelve tribes lost this sociopolitical function and were then taken into the emerging literary tradition of Israel in order to express the theological unity of the people of God. When Israel lost its kingship during and after the Babylonian exile, the genealogical lists of the twelve tribes became even more important as an expression of Israel’s identity and unity as a people of God in a variety of social and political contexts. The lengthy genealogy that takes up the first nine chapters of the postexilic book of I Chronicles is a witness to the powerful need for a sense of continuity with the past which such tribal enumeration fulfilled in postexilic Judaism.

Another function of these twelve-tribe lists throughout Numbers is the assurance that all Israelites from whatever tribe have a place at the table. Anthropologist Mary Douglas argues in her study of the book of Numbers that the book is aimed to be welcoming and inclusive of all Israelites in the context of a postexilic situation in which many of the community leaders resisted such welcoming of the Israelite “stranger” (Douglas, pp. 35–41). Douglas points to Ezra and Nehemiah as examples of one dominant view in postexilic Israel that bestowed privilege on returned exiles from southern Judah and excluded other tribes, especially the Samaritans who had roots in northern Israel among the Joseph tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin. These Joseph or northern Israelite tribes had been conquered earlier by the Assyrian empire. People of other nations and religions had been imported by the Assyrians into the regions of northern Israel, which resulted in intermarriage and a form of Israelite religion somewhat distinctive from that of southern Judah. When the southern Judahites were themselves conquered and exiled to Babylon and then returned to Judah by the Persians, the question naturally arose: who is the true Israel? Those like Ezra and Nehemiah seemed to keep the definition quite narrow by excluding the Samaritans and others who had intermarried with other peoples. But the writers of Numbers, Douglas argues, sought to undercut this exclusionary policy by emphasizing the inclusion of all twelve tribes, including the northern Israelite tribes, in both the judgments and the promises that the book of Numbers extends to all Israel. We will see in more detail how the text balances the need for structure with the need for broad inclusion in Numbers 2, with its carefully structured arrangement of the tribes in the mobile military camp.

The High Numbers in the Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26

Moses is commanded by God to take a census of the tribes of Israel at two separate occasions in Numbers 1 and 26. In both cases, all twelve tribes are listed along with a numerical total for each tribe. The order of the tribal names is, identical in both chapters. A grand total for all twelve tribes is given at the end of each census list. The numbers for the tribes and the total from each census are as follows:

	Numbers 1	Numbers 26
Reuben	46,500	43,730
Simeon	59,300	22,200
Gad	45,650	40,500
Judah	74,600	76,500
Issachar	54,400	64,300
Zebulun	57,400	60,500
Ephraim	40,500	32,500
Manasseh	32,200	52,700
Benjamin	35,400	45,600
Dan	62,700	64,400
Asher	41,500	53,400
Naphtali	53,400	45,400
Totals	603,550	601,730

The enormous size of the numbers in the census lists in Numbers 1 and 26 has often struck commentators as amazing or impossible. How could the tiny clan that began in Exodus 1 with a census list of seventy persons swell to over 600,000 fighting men plus women, children, and the elderly in the short span of a few hundred years? The figure of over 600,000 warriors presupposes a total population of over two million people who lived for forty years in the Sinai desert. The early church father Jerome held the numbers to be mysterious. John Calvin noted the enormous size of the numbers but argued against any who would deny God’s miraculous ability to increase God’s people from one family to over 600,000 within a period of 250 years.

Many solutions have been suggested. Some have suggested a possible alternate meaning for the Hebrew word for “thousand” to be a “tent-group” or “clan.” For example, the tribe of Reuben is counted in Num. 1:20–21 as forty-six “thousand,” five hundred. The number could be translated in an alternate way as forty-six “tent-groups,” with a total of five hundred people. This proposal would significantly decrease the numbers in each of the tribes. While this and other proposed explanations may be possible, it is clear that the present form of the text intends these figures to be taken as they stand—as “thousands,” and not “tent-groups.”

The round number 600,000 as the total number of Israelites coming out of Egypt is attested in texts that many scholars see as firmly fixed in some of the earliest literary traditions in the Pentateuch. Scholars cite Exod. 12:37 as an example: “The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children.” Numbers 11:21 may also be cited in this regard. The stylized and symbolic quality of the number 600,000 may be evident from the fact that it is a multiple of twelve representing the twelve tribes of Israel (12 x 50,000). The numbers of the individual tribes in Numbers 1 and 26 do not usually stray very far from the range of forty to sixty thousand, or an average of 50,000. In both lists, six tribes are above 50,000 and six tribes are below 50,000.

In any case, the high numbers in the census lists are difficult to reconcile historically. Their present function in the book of Numbers, however, seems in part to serve a broader theological purpose. The numbers express the extent to which God has graciously blessed Israel in multiplying their descendants to such large numbers. God’s promises in Genesis to Abraham and Sarah that they will have innumerable descendants are clearly in view. In these Genesis texts, God promises descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven (Gen. 15:5) and the grains of sand on the seashore (Gen. 22:17; cf. also Gen. 17:4–8). The sheer number of stars or grains of sand are impossible to count. In addition, the emergence of the new generation in Egypt that “increased greatly” and “grew exceedingly strong” (Exod. 1:5–7) is part of this same theological concern to underscore God’s faithfulness to promises made to the ancestors. The remarkably high numbers in the census lists in Numbers 1 and 26 represent God’s significant down payment on the promise of innumerable descendants. But the census totals also underscore the partial character of the fulfillment of the ancestral promises. God is not finished with Israel yet. The promised land still lies in the future.

The large number of fighting men counted in Numbers 1 also ought to provide grounds for great confidence for the Israelites as they approach the border of the promised land. A total of 600,000 warriors would be a large army even in modern terms, but in its ancient Near Eastern context such a size would be massive indeed. The spy story in Numbers 13–14 will show that in spite of the huge army, the Israelites will lack confidence in God’s power and will not trust God to bring them into the land.

Finally, the variations in the census numbers for each of the twelve tribes hold some interpretive significance as well. We have already noted how the average for each tribe approximates 50,000, with six tribes in each list below and six tribes in each list above the 50,000 mark. But there are other variations with some meaning as well. The tribe of Judah, for example, has the largest number in both census lists, which corresponds to its preeminence as the leader of the camp of Israel on the march in the wilderness. Judah occupies the favored position in Israel’s camp, which is to the east, the direction that the opening of the tent of meeting faces and that parallels the favored position of the priesthood of Aaron in the inner circle of the camp. The book of Numbers begins in chapters 1 and 2 with Reuben, the first-born of Jacob, as the preeminent tribe in first position. Then the census takes place and Judah is given the most favored position at the head of the tribes, as we shall see in Numbers 2.

This change in status between Reuben and Judah is also apparent when the census numbers in chapter 1 are compared with those in chapter 26. Judah remains the most numerous tribe and increases from 74,600 in Numbers 1 to 76,500 in Numbers 26. Reuben, on the other hand, decreases in size from 46,500 to 43,730, which corresponds to that tribe’s demotion in status relative to Judah. The narrative in Numbers 16 involving the rebellion of Dathan and Abiram, who were members of the tribe of Reuben, may also reflect on a literary level this lowering of status in relation to Judah.

The most dramatic decrease among all the tribes is that of Simeon, from 59,300 in Numbers 1 to 22,200 in Numbers 26. This “demotion” may reflect the narrative in Numbers 25, in which the head of a Simeonite clan committed a grave sin against God that caused a severe plague among the people. The special census for the Levites in Numbers 3 and 26 is another literary device signaling the special position of this tribe in relation to the other tribal groups. Although not all of the numbers can be shown to have a particular literary significance within the narratives of the book of Numbers, the presence of some correspondences between the census lists and other stories in Numbers should urge us to pay attention to the important role these census lists play within the whole structure of the book.

For modern readers, the first chapter of Numbers is almost mind-numbing, with its roll call of tribal leaders and the repetitive listing of the twelve tribes and their census numbers. We may find it hard to get hooked into a story that seems to have such a mechanical and numerical beginning. But for the ancient readers of the book, such lists and numbers bore crucial insights into the very soul of their identity, their unity, their relationship to God, and their place within the community of God’s people. The lists of names and numbers are the material and tangible signs of God’s blessing, God’s faithfulness to past promises, and the surety of God’s future promise keeping.

In fact, we moderns can readily find analogies to the passion for lists of names and numbers evident in the book of Numbers. Children run hurriedly to lists of posted names to see who made the cut for an athletic team or the school play. Parents peruse newspapers to see whose children made the honor roll this semester. Frightened loved ones rush to the first-aid shelter or call the Red Cross to hear lists of names of people who died in an earthquake or have been found under the rubble of a fallen building. Families wait with strained faces for lists of names of those who died in combat or at the hands of death squads in terror-ridden places around the world. If we capture just a glimpse of the life-and-death stakes involved in such lists of names, we may begin to sense something of the passion for careful enumeration and careful naming that lies behind what seem to be cold lists in the book of Numbers. Who am I? Do I belong? Is God faithful? Who are my sister and brother? What are my roots? Do I have a future in this community? Such are the existentially charged questions that breathe through the names and numbers of Numbers 1 and 26.

Many today are fascinated with their own brand of numbers, censuses, polls, market indicators, interest rates, stock market averages, statistics, and number-crunching machines called computers. Many define their identity and value and future by computing numbers that measure our human accomplishments, whether of political strength or material possessions or military hardware or number of square feet. But the census list in Numbers reminds us that identity and value and future hope lie in the tangible and concrete ways in which God is working and stirring among us in this world. What is God a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Interpretation
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Preface
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: The Death of the Old Generation Numbers 1–25
• Part Two: The Rise of A New Generation on the Edge of the Promised Land Numbers 26–36
• Bibliography