Kalev Creative

In December 2019, we started writing notes on Genesis 1 and posting them to Twitter in the hope of engaging with others and learning from the many biblical scholars who use that platform. We have continued, slowly, to work our way through the narrative portions of the books of the Bible that lead up to Caleb’s story. We have finally found him here in Numbers and plan to continue on until the end of his narrative in Judges 1.

Twitter’s limitations force changes, so there are differences between these, which we took as we read and studied, and what we tweeted out. Because they were written for Twitter, they contain artifacts that make less sense in a webpage format. We hope you will bear with some of the awkwardness to see the process we’re using to understand and re-tell a richly informed version of Caleb’s story.

To find the tweet thread as we posted it, you can go to Twitter and search for ‘@kalevcreative’ plus a hashtag in the title or keywords from the body of the section you’re interested in.

Please read, share, and comment or engage with us on Twitter or via email. We will do our best to respond. In the end, we hope to understand where Caleb’s story fits in the larger narrative, what role he plays in God’s plan for Israel and the nations, and what we can learn from him.  

#Bible #Numbers 1

Numbers starts with place – the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting - and time – the first of the second month of the second year after they left Egypt. God tells Moses to take a census of the men who can go to war and names heads of the tribes. 

We find a formulaic presentation of the count of each tribe, which repetitively emphasizes “whoever was able to go out to war.” 

God sets aside the Levites for service in the tabernacle. They are not counted among those who go to war but are charged with the security of the tabernacle, “…the layman who comes near shall be put to death.” God gives them responsibility for the care and transportation of items making up the tabernacle’s furniture and construction elements. They camp around it in part to insulate the rest of the Israelites from direct access to it “…so that there will be no wrath on the congregation of the sons of Israel.” 

Recalling Noah (Genesis 6:22), “Thus the sons of Israel did; according to all which the Lord had commanded Moses, so they did.” 

#Bible #Numbers 2

God tells Moses and Aaron the Israelites must camp under a standard (or in military units, depending on the interpretation) with “emblems of his family,” located away from the tent of meeting. 

The organization of the tribes resembles a modern infantry patrol base, with the headquarters element in the center and the remaining units arrayed in order of march around the perimeter.  

The tabernacle opens to the east, where Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun camp. “They will travel at the front.”  

As in the previous chapter, the repetitive organization of the text emphasizes the tribes are ordered under their standards by families, as armies, each with a leader.  

The emerging picture is of an expeditionary military force led not by a great king or general but by God himself from his dwelling place.  

#Bible #Numbers 3-4 #Levites

Chapter 3 zooms in on the remaining tribe, the Levites and spends more space on it than the others combined. God assigns them collective responsibility, reserves them for himself as substitutes for the firstborn of Israel, and orders Moses to count them. As we learn the details of each family, we also learn their specific responsibilities around the tabernacle. 

Since there are fewer Levites than the firstborn Israelites they are substitutes for, God assesses redemption money for the remainder.  

After chapter 3’s numbering of the three Levite families, Chapter 4 gives them more detailed responsibilities to set up, take down, carry, and guard to preserve the sanctity of the elements of the tabernacle. Like the Israelite tribes, the families of the Levites encamp around the tabernacle, forming an inner ring, with Moses and Aaron and their families on the east side near the entrance.   

In chapter 3, God orders the Levite males one month and older counted.

In chapter 4, they count again, only those from 30 to 50 years old, “who entered the company for the work in the tent of meeting.”  

Here, we get a brief window into the operations of the tabernacle, specifically, how it’s disassembled. The instructions demonstrate the primacy of preservation of the tabernacle’s holiness. Priests cover the articles of the holy places before the Levites can approach to pack and carry them. There is order even in disassembly.  

#Bible #Numbers 5-6

As in earlier books, we will focus primarily on narrative. Numbers 5-6 is primarily law code concerning relationship with God: expulsion of people in an unclean state from the camp, reparation for sin, the Nazirite vow, purification from defilement, and the Priestly Blessing.

It contains one of the stranger and more difficult passages in the Bible, regarding a man who believes his wife may have been unfaithful. Its position in Numbers, following census-taking for war and temple assignments, seems haphazard, but the stories that follow may clarify its role. Throughout Israel’s history, God compares its willingness to follow other gods to an unfaithful spouse chasing after other lovers. In chapters to come in Numbers, we will encounter rebellions leading to the death of an entire generation. This strange ritual may be best understood as foreshadowing and laying legal groundwork for God’s response to his people’s unfaithfulness. @devoninMENA wrote a thoughtful thread worth considering.

#Bible #Numbers 7-8 #gifts

"When Moses had completed setting up the tabernacle, he anointed it and consecrated it and all its furnishings, and he anointed and consecrated the altar and all its utensils. Then the leaders of Israel, the heads of their clans, made an offering." 

At the consecration of the tabernacle, the chiefs of all 12 tribes bring identical utensils and offerings, apparently suitable to perform a near-complete set of offerings, excluding the guilt offering. 

"Now when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the Lord, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the atonement lid that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim." 

God tells Moses to set up and light the lamps of the lampstand to shine south to north in the west-east oriented tabernacle. They illuminate the table and the bread on it. The priest passes through its fire light on the way to the cloud of the incense altar and the most holy place.  

God orders Moses to ceremonially cleanse the Levites and prepare them for service in the tabernacle.  

"'I have taken the Levites instead of all the firstborn sons among the Israelites. I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and his sons from among the Israelites, to do the work for the Israelites in the tent of meeting, and to make atonement for the Israelites, so there will be no plague among the Israelites when the Israelites come near the sanctuary.’" 

#Bible #Numbers 9-10 #Passover #trumpets

God commands the Israelites to celebrate Passover at its appointed time. The first Passover happened as they prepared to leave Egypt, the second as they prepare to leave Sinai. God makes provision for those who are unclean during Passover by authorizing a second opportunity a month later. 

“Now on the day that the tabernacle was erected, the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony, and in the evening it was like the appearance of fire over the tabernacle until morning.” Inside the tabernacle, the menorah shines toward the table and the bread, while the incense altar emits smoke behind. Outside and above, God’s presence shines in fire at night and cloud during the day. His presence signals when to leave and to stop and travels over the tabernacle. 

God also commands the fashioning of silver trumpets for a similar purpose – to signal the movement of the congregation – for gathering, breaking camp, leadership meetings, organized departure, call to war, and for their feasts and offerings to God.

The Arch of Titus in Rome includes a relief carving of the Roman Army’s 71 AD triumphal procession following the sack of Jerusalem, which included items from the Temple – the menorah and the silver trumpets. Presumably, these trumpets were patterned after those mentioned here in Numbers 10, though Milgrom claims the originals were shorter. 

The people have camped around Sinai/Horeb while constructing and dedicating the tabernacle. God’s presence moved from Sinai to his mobile dwelling place. Now they are prepared for him to lead them away from Sinai, through the wilderness into the land he promised Abraham centuries earlier. 

#Bible #Numbers 10b #wilderness #travel

The Israelites set out from Sinai, once again traveling through the wilderness toward the land God promised to Abraham as an inheritance for his descendants. As in the beginning of the book, we get a date/time stamp:

Now in the second year, in the second month, on the twentieth of the month, the cloud was lifted from over the tabernacle of the testimony; and the sons of Israel set out on their journeys from the wilderness of Sinai. Then the cloud settled down in the wilderness of Paran. 

The narrative includes repetitive description of the tribes’ activity, this time emphasizing the tribal organization of “armies” under a standard or organized in a military unit, depending on whose interpretation you accept. Judah leads a contingent of three tribes, and the tabernacle follows him. Reuben leads three tribes, and the “holy objects” of the tabernacle follow him. Ephraim follows with three tribes, and Dan and its three tribes form the rear guard.  

Moses asks Hobab, a Midianite familiar with the wilderness territory, to accompany them on their journey as a guide.  

The ark travels in front. The cloud hovers over the people. Moses calls on the Lord when they set out and when they arrive.

#Bible #Numbers 11 #wilderness #rebellion

In Numbers 9, the Israelites celebrate Passover as they had in Exodus 12.

In Numbers 10:33, they traveled three days from Sinai as they traveled three days from the sea crossing in Exodus 15:22.

In Numbers 10, Moses sings a song of God’s victory as Miriam had in Exodus 15.

In Exodus 16-17, the Israelites complain about water, then food, then water again. There, God chastises them for complaining and disobedience but provides rather than punishes.

In Numbers 11, they complain for an undefined reason, possibly their unbroken travel, then about food, how preferable Egypt’s meat was to the manna God’s provided in the desert. Finally, Moses complains to the Lord about leading the rebellious people. God responds by putting his spirit on 70 elders to share the burden of leadership and promising to overwhelm the Israelites with meat. God delivers an overabundance of quail, so the people collect more than they can eat.

Here however, God responds to the rebellious people with judgment, first by fire, then by plague.

After he has appeared to and made a covenant with them at Sinai, he seems unwilling to allow them to go unpunished when they rebel.

Jacob Milgrom identifies commonality between the complaint narratives: complaint, divine punishment, and naming the site. He sees this compact pattern recur in similar accounts in Exodus, Numbers, and Judges.

#Bible #Numbers 12 #Aaron #Miriam

In this rebellion narrative, even Moses’ own family members “spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had married a Cushite woman); and they said, ‘Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?’ And the Lord heard it.” 

In his Numbers commentary, Gordon Wenham emphasizes the seriousness of the episode, “It was not just a case of petty family jealousy, for Aaron, Moses’ brother, was also the high priest and therefore supreme religious leader and most holy man in Israel; while Miriam, his sister, was a prophetess and thus head of the spirit-filled women (Exod. 15:20f.). Here, then, is an alliance of priest and prophet, the two archetypes of Israelite religion, challenging Moses’ position as sole mediator between God and Israel.” 

This is a difficult story because its elements are unclear. Some argue that Cush here refers to an area near Midian, where Moses fled and met his wife Zipporah in Exodus 2:15-22. In Genesis 10:6, Cush’s descendant Nimrod founds empires in Mesopotamia, placing Cush’s descendants east of Canaan. Habakkuk 3:7 links “Cushan” and Midian. We know from archaeology and numerous references throughout the Old Testament, that Cush is the name of a southern neighbor of (often at war with) Egypt, a region that is now Ethiopia and Sudan, far from Midian on another continent.  

Either Moses’ siblings spoke against him because of a woman he’d been married to while he lived for forty years in her native land, or they are referring to a different woman from Ethiopia/Sudan who Moses has (likely recently) married. Would Moses marry a second woman? The question gives us reason to reconsider another enigmatic passage, Exodus 4:24-26, where God moves to kill Moses, his Midianite wife Zipporah circumcises their son, which apparently saves Moses, and tells him, “’You are a bridegroom of blood’ -because of the circumcision.” Her further actions are absent from the text, but we learn in Exodus 18:2-5 “Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took Moses' wife Zipporah, after he had sent her away…

Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness where he was camped, at the mount of God.”

Sometime after Zipporah calls Moses “a bridegroom of blood,” he sends her away. She returns with her father and sons to meet Moses in the wilderness but does not appear again in the narrative, though his sons do as members of the priestly line. We learn nothing more of the Cushite woman either. The biblical author does not discuss Moses’ wife further.

We do not have enough detail to understand Moses’ marriage well. Some contextual clues suggest a divorce from Zipporah and remarriage to a Cushite refugee from Egypt. Exodus 18’s “after he had sent her away” [שִׁלּוּחֶֽי] resembles Deuteronomy 24:1’s “he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house” [שִׁלְּחָ֖הּ] Miriam’s punishment of a white skin disease may be a response to her objection to a dark skinned African Cushite.

During each stage of Moses’ life, women have rescued him at key moments. His mother and sister hid him from the pharaoh’s murderous decree and put him in the water, so pharaoh’s daughter could pull him from the water to adopt him. Zipporah’s sisters gave him water as he emerged from the desert fleeing another of pharaoh’s death sentences. On his way back to Egypt (at an overnight encampment, likely a location with water), Zipporah again saves him, this time from God’s own death sentence with blood by circumcising his son.

After each of these salvation narratives, Moses leaves the woman who saved him, and the story is silent about her. Miriam, Moses’ sister rejoiced as all the Israelites were saved through the water, yet here, she opposes Moses because of another woman.

In her book Moses Among the Idols, Amy Balogh writes movingly of Moses’ unique and isolating relationship with God. This Numbers 12 account emphasizes that isolation – even his own brother and sister resent him. A relationship with a new foreign woman even as he has become as a foreign presence among his ancestral people does not seem out of place with Moses’ dependent yet disjointed personal history.

God defends Moses with a poem emphasizing their unique relationship. They speak face to face and Moses “beholds the form of the Lord.”

“Afterward…the people moved on from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.” 

#Bible #Numbers 13 #recon

God tells Moses to send spies/scouts/? to spy out/search/investigate the land of Canaan.

Biblical scholars have conflicting opinions about what they’re doing and why. To resolve that conflict, it may help to step outside biblical scholarship.

When God called Abram to go to the land of Canaan (Genesis 12) and promised that it would be an inheritance to his descendants (Genesis 15), he also indicated that at a future time, he would bring those descendants into the land to possess it. (Genesis 15:13-16) To this point in Exodus-Numbers, God has fulfilled his Genesis 15:14 promise to judge the nation that enslaved them and bring them out with many possessions. In fulfillment of his Genesis 15:16 promise to bring them into the land, he repeatedly declared his intent for the Israelites to occupy the land of Canaan (Exodus 6:2-8, 34:11-17, Leviticus 14:34, 18:3, 25:38). God ordered a census (Numbers 1) and organized the tribes as military units in a military formation for movement in the desert. (Numbers 2) God, through Moses, is forming an expeditionary military force in preparation for a military invasion of Canaan.

Despite changes in technology, some infantry tactics change little over time because the mission does not change. The modern American infantry soldier’s mission is to “close with and destroy the enemy” using “speed, surprise, and violence of action.” Ancient soldiers across cultures and eras were no different. The sparse biblical warfare accounts show Abraham’s men, Jacob’s sons, and later Israelite warriors doing the same things via the same means. Ancient soldiers carried weapons, armor, sustainment, medical, and communication items, just as modern soldiers do. Military practice is extremely conservative and intolerant of the extraneous because the consequence for failure is death. As a result, military practice is often a more useful lens through which to view the Conquest accounts than others common in biblical scholarship.

The US Army Ranger Handbook is a standard infantry reference for armies worldwide, whether to study their friends or foes. It defines the leaders’ reconnaissance - “During his reconnaissance, the leader pinpoints the objective, selects reconnaissance, security, support, and assault positions for his elements, and adjusts his plan based on his observation of the objective.”

Department of the Army, Ranger Handbook: TC 3-21.76 (Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2017), 7-4.

The modern military commander will define Priority Intelligence Requirements, which must be met for a successful reconnaissance mission. In Numbers 13, we see Moses doing the same for the twelve leaders:

Go up into the Negeb and go up into the hill country, and see what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land. (Numbers 13:17-20 NET) 

As we proceed through the stories of battle with the Canaanites, we will find that God’s military activities and the Israelites’ are often difficult to distinguish from one another. Here in Numbers 13, we find a part of such a scenario. In Numbers 13, God tells Moses to send out chiefs to spy out the land. In Deuteronomy 1:22, recalling the same event, Moses reminds the Israelites that they had called for men to be sent to scout out the land. The activities of God and the Israelites during the Conquest will overlap and precise ownership of them will continue to be unclear.  

#Bible #Numbers 13 cont. #Joshua #Caleb

Numbers 13 gives us a list of chiefs of the tribes. Given the context, these are likely their military leaders. Here, we meet Caleb for the first time and learn that “Joshua” is a new name Moses has given his assistant, who previously led Israel against the Amalekites. The name is only a slight shift in meaning from “he saves” to “the LORD saves.” Interestingly, the name shift parallels the warfare accounts, which also alternately credit the Israelites and God as the actors or responsible parties.

Caleb’s name means “dog.” Its meaning is ambiguous – is he a reviled figure or a faithful one? 

They leave from the wilderness of Zin in the south and travel as far as “Rehob at Lebo Hamath” in the north. Though there is a modern Nahal Zin, the location of the ancient one is unknown except that it was in the Negev south of what would become Judah, whose southern border ran from the southern tip of the Salt/Dead Sea to the Mediterranean/Sea of the Philistines. Rehob means “open area.” Lebo Hamath’s meaning is disputed, potentially referring to a place in modern northern Israel near Mount Hermon or to the ancient city of Lebo near the Orontes River in modern Syria, part of the ancient kingdom of Hamath. Because it lacks specificity and reliable references to modern place names, the leaders’ route is impossible to accurately recreate.

We do know where Hebron is, however. Ancient remnants of walls, a city gate, and a staircase survive, dating back to the time of Abraham.

#Bible #Numbers 13 cont. #fruit

The leaders gather grapes, pomegranates, and figs from the Eshcol valley, likely one of the valleys around Hebron, which remain agricultural centers today. Fruitfulness is a central theme of God’s purpose, blessing, and provision beginning in Genesis 1. This fruit is the tangible evidence that God is fulfilling his promise to the Israelites by bringing them into the land. 

Their journey takes 40 days, a frequently used time period in biblical narrative, most prominently associated with the Flood. This is likely not a coincidence, as the Flood was a judgment narrative and the conquest of Canaan is similarly the story of judgment of sin and the return of a remnant to a fruitful land (Genesis 15:12-16, Deuteronomy 18:9-12, 28:1-14). 40 days is a reasonable amount of time to walk at a moderate pace of 20 miles/day from the Negev to either of the candidates for Lebo-Hamath and back.  

“They came back to Moses and Aaron and to the whole community of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They reported to the whole community and showed the fruit of the land. They told Moses, ‘We went to the land where you sent us. It is indeed flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. But the inhabitants are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.’” (NET) 

Though the land is what God had promised, most of the leaders see the occupants as an overwhelming threat.

#Bible #Numbers 13 cont. #peoples

“the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan." 

The leaders give a report that includes six peoples living in the land.

-Descendants of Anak, who the rebellious leaders associate with the Nephilim. We first learned about the Nephilim in Genesis 6. “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” The only report of this association with the Nephilim comes from the rebellious leaders, so it’s not clear whether we’re intended to believe it. However, in Deuteronomy 2, we learn the Anakim were considered Rephaim and that the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites had previously driven out Rephaim tribes from their own territories. During Abraham’s time, Mesopotamian kings fought those same Rephaim tribes in the same regions (Genesis 14). In his book Unseen Realm, Michael Heiser proposes that the Rephaim were a primary focus of the Conquest of Canaan, that their removal was an essential task for the Israelites. It is safe to say that in Numbers, the Anakim appear as powerful seed of the serpent figures whose presence provides excuse for the rebellious leaders. 

-Amalek lives in the Negev. They first appear in Genesis 36, originating from Esau’s descendant and a Horite/Rephaim woman. We last saw them in Exodus 17, when they attacked the vulnerable Israelites shortly after the Red Sea crossing. At that time, Moses said, “The Lord has sworn; the Lord will have war against Amalek from generation to generation."  

-Hittites lived in the land of Canaan during Abraham’s time. Abraham lived among them and purchased a field and the cave of Machpelah near Hebron, where the Israelites’ ancestors were buried.  

-Jebusites inhabited what would become Jerusalem.  

-Amorites were also in the land during Abraham’s time, and he lived among them too, fighting alongside them against Mesopotamian invaders (Genesis 14). Yet in Genesis 15:16, God tells Abraham his descendants will inherit their land, though not yet because their sins are not yet complete (or perhaps, they are not yet fully corrupt).  

-Canaanites live near the coast and the Jordan River. These also were in the land during Abraham’s time. It is not clear whether these people were genetically related or Canaanite was a catch-all term for peoples who lived in the region.

#Bible #Numbers 13 cont. #Caleb

Caleb advocates for assaulting the land immediately, saying the conquest of Canaan is achievable.

The other leaders claim the Israelites cannot do it because the people in the land are too strong, the land “devours its inhabitants,” and that there are giants there, relatives of the Nephilim.

These characterizations of the land don’t appear trustworthy given the source, but it’s reasonable to believe the majority of the leaders recognized a legitimate threat.

The resulting choice is a version of the Genesis 3 temptation story – here, the rebellious leaders reject the fruit and the responsibility to keep and guard the land. Like Eve who believed the serpent about the fruit rather than God, the leaders reject God’s assessment of the land in fear of seed of the serpent figures in it. In their eyes, the land itself is predatory, devouring rather than the source of life God sees in it for his people.

In his online commentary, @zugzwanged suggests a relationship with another passage, Genesis 37:12-38, in which Jacob sends Joseph from the vicinity of Hebron using language echoed in Moses’ request to the leaders for a report of the land. Then, Judah played a key role in the serpent-like decision to enslave his brother Joseph. Here, Caleb, Judah’s leader, honors God with his response.

#Bible #Numbers 14 #rebellion

Though not precise, the language here suggests the people’s response to Caleb’s and the other leaders’ conflicting reports percolated overnight. The people loudly denounce their circumstances and leaders, weep, and complain against Moses and Aaron. 

Since early in Exodus, God repeatedly promises to bring his people into a fruitful land where they could live in relationship with him. As in Genesis 3, where the serpent provides an opposing view, and Eve chooses to believe the serpent rather than God, here, the rebellious leaders assess the land to be lethal rather than life giving, and the people choose to believe them. 

They instead choose Egypt, where they were murdered and enslaved. They threaten to kill the leaders that remain faithful to God. As in earlier judgment narratives, God responds when his purpose in the land and the continued existence of a faithful remnant are threatened.  

#Bible #Numbers 14 cont. #Caleb #Joshua

Moses and Aaron fall to the ground in response to the people’s decision to return to Egypt. In his commentary, Stephen K. Sherwood identifies similar actions in Numbers 16 and 20, Genesis 44, Joshua 7, Judges 13, 1 Samuel 25, and 1 Chronicles 21. In each, the intent appears to be a plea to avert judgment. The political and religious leaders of Israel are speechless and have no response but to plead for mercy, presumably from God himself. Moses’ relationship with God suggests he understands the severity of the rebellion and that God’s judgment will result.

Caleb and, this time, Joshua tear garments as a sign of grief and respond to the people’s complaints. In the first scene, Caleb stands alone. The future of Israel is in jeopardy and, until this point, it’s unclear whether even Moses’ own servant will remain faithful to God. Joshua’s stand is a second, essential glimmer of hope in the darkest of circumstances. Together they argue:

“The land we passed through to investigate is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land that is flowing with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection has turned aside from them, but the Lord is with us. Do not fear them!” (NET) 

They use the language – flowing with milk and honey – God has used for the land since early Exodus.

The people claimed the land would devour them. Joshua and Caleb argue, with God’s help, the people of the land are bread for the Israelites. They repeatedly emphasize God’s assistance as the key element in the assault on Canaan. God is sovereign. He is providing a good land. He is with us. He will do it. Do not rebel against him.  

The people are not at all swayed by their God-aligned argument and, like Cain, reply by threatening to kill, to assassinate their God-appointed leaders. This is thorough rebellion – against the land God promised, the leaders he appointed, and the purpose and calling he has for the people. To preserve a remnant to dwell faithfully with him in the land, no alternative remains. 

“…the glory of the Lord appeared to all the Israelites at the tent of meeting.” 

#Bible #Numbers 14 cont. #judgment

Beginning in Genesis 1 and 2, God consistently demonstrates his desire for his people to live in a fruitful land where he can be in relationship with them. Through the intervening stories, when the people’s rebellion threatened continued relationship or ruined the land, God judged rebellious people via exile or death, yet preserved a remnant to continue in relationship with him. Hundreds of years earlier, God called Abraham into the land of Canaan and promised it as an inheritance to his descendants. At the border of the land, having received the leaders’ report of the land’s fruitfulness, here in Numbers the people of Israel focus instead on its obstacles and entirely reject God’s plan for them, threaten to kill the rulers he’s appointed, and purpose to return to the nation that had murdered and enslaved them. 

Caleb and Joshua, Moses and Aaron are saved by the appearance of the tangible presence of God before the nation. 

Ignoring the rebels, God speaks directly to Moses in a passage of extraordinary power. God declares his intent to destroy the people and start a new nation from Moses. Moses, in his position as image of God, acts as intercessor, praying God’s own words back to him, identifying God as slow to anger and merciful, pleading for God to forgive the people.

God’s response should surely be regarded as one of the most significant moments in all of Scripture:

I have forgiven them as you asked. But truly, as I live [and as the whole] earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord…all the people have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have tempted me now these ten times, and have not obeyed me—they will by no means see the land that I promised on oath to their fathers, nor will any of them who despised me see it—Only my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit and has followed me fully—I will bring him into the land where he had gone, and his descendants will possess it…Tomorrow, turn and journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. 

God continues, speaking now to Moses and Aaron, saying three times that the dead bodies of the rebellious Israelites would fall in the wilderness, and, in response to the expressed concern their children would die in the wilderness, God will ensure it is they who will enter the land. The rebellious key leaders die immediately of plague, and God orders the remaining Israelites out into the wilderness.  

In his commentary, Dennis T. Olson identifies the previous time God struck with pestilence – Exodus 9, during the plagues against their Egyptian oppressors. In Leviticus 26:21-25, God established conditions in which he would bring pestilence on Israel. The Israelite leaders’ rebellion here is so severe, they now merit punishment leveled against their former murderous enslavers. 

#Bible #Numbers 14 cont. #judgment

God sentences the remainder of the adult generation of Israelites to death in the wilderness. They will remain there 40 years, 1 year for each day of the leaders’ reconnaissance. Afterward, it will be their children who go into the land. Because of their faithfulness, God recognizes Caleb and, now, Joshua and grants them a reprieve. They too will enter in their old age.

Three times God emphasizes that the dead bodies of the “evil generation” will fall in the wilderness.  

Embarrassed, some among the Israelites decide they want to invade after all and attempt to do so without God’s permission. Moses warns them against fighting without God, but they proceed and are defeated, by Canaanites and Amalekites, driven southwest to Hormah (destruction).  God’s presence is an essential component to the success of the conquest. The Israelites cannot successfully fight the peoples in the land in their own strength. Though God earlier promised to “wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17), he allows them to defeat the rebellious Israelites.  

#Bible #Numbers 15

This passage follows a pattern we’ve seen in Exodus and Leviticus – following an account of a rebellion, we find a section of law code that related in some way to the nature of the rebellion. The people have rejected God’s plan for them to enter the land. God has sentenced the Israelites to wander in the wilderness until the rebellious generation dies out, yet immediately afterward, God gives them instructions for restoring relationship and living in the land.

We find instructions for sacrifices, a reminder to sacrifice the firstfruits of the land as they enter it, instructions for reconciliation after unintentional sin, but intolerance for defiant sin.

It’s also part of a pattern we considered last in Leviticus 10 where Nadab and Abihu were punished with death immediately after receiving and rebelling against Tabernacle instructions. Accounts of rebellion in Numbers 14, 15, and 16 each end in death. Here an apparently defiant Israelite does work in the form of gathering sticks on the Sabbath. The Israelites detain him, and the Lord tells them he must be stoned to death. There is an ongoing public debate over the Noahic covenant’s wording (Gen 9:6), whether men are responsible for administering the death penalty. In this passage and others cited in the link above, God clearly commands men to do so. In others, God does it himself.

Finally, God gives them instructions to wear tzitzit, “Thus you will remember and obey all my commandments and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God.””

#Bible #Numbers 16 #judgment #Korah

Just as many judgment narratives are a form of de-creation, the stories of Israelite rebellion following this generation’s sentence of exile from the land/death in the wilderness are often reversals.

In the Berit Olam Numbers commentary, Stephen K. Sherwood contrasts the rebellious Dathan and Abiran’s twice-spoken “we will not go up” to the punishment of descending alive into the earth.

He also sees reversal in “The land opened its mouth and swallowed them up” as perverse fulfillment of the Numbers 14 rebellious leaders’ claim that the land devours its inhabitants. 

Similarly Milgrom notes in his Numbers commentary that Dathan and Abiram accused Moses of blinding the people’s eyes, but their judgment happens in front of the whole congregation.

Verse 30’s prophetic prayer is mirrored in verse 31-33’s account of judgment.  

In his Numbers commentary, Jay Sklar posits that Korah jealously accuses Aaron, yet it was God who made the decisions Korah resents. Dathan and Abiram resent Moses as one who has usurped the authority they perceive they should have as descendants of the oldest son of Jacob, yet, again, it was God who appointed Moses. They criticize Moses for failing to bring them into the land of milk and honey, though they were undoubtedly among those who refused to accept Caleb and Joshua’s assessment of Canaan. Instead they portray Egypt as the fruitful land, substituting in their own minds the land where they were enslaved for the land God promised as a place they would live in relationship with him.  

As the Leviticus 10 Nadab and Abihu incident demonstrated, offering unauthorized fire before the Lord carries the death penalty, so Moses’ proposal foreshadows the outcome of the trial.  

Milgrom identifies “four separate rebellions…the Levites against Aaron; Dathan and Abiran against Moses; the tribal chieftains against Aaron; and the entire community against Moses and Aaron.” 

The accounts of rebellion, especially with respect to who will be in leadership, appear to be the “subduing” that must happen within Israel for God’s appointed order, his Eden-garden in the wilderness, to form and prosper. Moses as unique image and mediator, Aaron’s line as ongoing priestly image of God and intercessor. Often translated something like “do something entirely new,” Moses’ proposed evidence of God’s judgment is more literally, “create a new creation,” a reference to the Genesis 1-2 Creator. These judgment narratives are embroidered with creation threads.  

As in Genesis 1-11, God’s standard is evident in his and Moses’ words. The rebellious leaders embrace a kind of opposite view. They receive judgment as reversal – de-creation, sentenced to what they’d sought to avoid, skewered by their own words.  

[previously unpublished]

Robert Alter, in his Hebrew Bible translation and commentary, recognizes that the story of the bronze firepans used in Moses’ test becoming altar plating tells us something about the nature of holiness: “the fire-pans, by virtue of having been carried in to sacred space, even though by unauthorized persons who paid for the encroachment with their lives, have become holy.” 

As with the tzitzit of Numbers 15, which serve as reminders on an Israelite’s clothing, Alter and the Jewish Publication Society’s commentary recognize the hammered plating as a reminder for all who sacrifice at the altar, “ritual apparatus is meant to recall monitory events in the Wilderness wanderings.” By the end of the chapter, Aaron’s staff will become one too.  

The Israelites blame Moses and Aaron for the deaths of the rebellious leaders, though their deaths were obviously miraculous. It is as though they are blind to God’s role in judgment.  

Aaron uses a fire-pan, the same element that led to judgment for the rebellious leaders, to bring salvation from the plague to the people.  

#Bible #Numbers 17 #rebellion #almond

We again find stories of rebellion, slowly working through various subdivisions of the Israelite people, sometimes including (at least for narrative purposes) nearly all the people. Here, the heads of the tribes challenge Aaron for ceremonial authority. Moses proposes a test involving their staffs. 

Previously, in Pharoah’s court, Aaron’s staff yielded a tannin, a serpent/alligator/sea monster. Here the staff of Levi, which Aaron holds, becomes a seed bearing tree. Each of these is Genesis 1 imagery – the seed/fruit tree of day 3, the sea monster of day 5. One as warning of impending judgment for the pharaoh, the other as sign of judgment for rebellious Israelite leaders. We may also see the snake and fruit tree temptation of Genesis 3.  

Moses places Aaron’s rod as a sign before the Ark of the Covenant (not in it) that the rebels might “let there be an end to their murmurings against [God], and they shall not die.” Yet, they immediately begin again, “Look, we perish, we are lost, all of us are lost. Whoever so much as comes near the Lord’s Tabernacle will die. Are we done with perishing?”

David Dorsey, in The Literary Structure of the Old Testament, sees the budding of Aaron’s rod as the center of a chiasm encompassing the Sinai – Moab wilderness journey:

(adapted)

-Journey begins at Sinai

-Complain about hardship, manna, lack of food

-Miriam punished for sin

-Rebellion at Kadesh

-Ritual regulations

-Aaron’s staff

-Ritual regulations

-Rebellion at Kadesh

-Aaron punished for sin

-Complain about hardship, manna, lack of food

-Journey ends at plains of Moab 

#Bible #Numbers 18 #guard

As we’ve often observed in earlier accounts of rebellion and judgment, God afterward gives legal guidance to address the issue in question. Unusually, many commentators note, God here speaks directly to Aaron.  

God commissions the priests and Levites to guard the Eden garden-like Tabernacle using the same vocabulary with which he commissioned the first humans to guard the Eden garden in Genesis 2:15. The Numbers 1 census and following passages excluded them from military service, but this passage makes clear the goal was not a pacifist Tabernacle service, rather the priests and Levites here become something like the modern US Secret Service or Shin Bet Protective Security Department, dedicated to the protection of the Tabernacle’s holiness (per Milgrom in his JPS Numbers commentary, priests responsible for the inside and Levites for the outside of the Tabernacle.) They are responsible for the actions of the people but also for enforcing the rules on each other. In 1 Chronicles 9, we find they develop over time into an organizational structure and schedule resembling a modern guard service. The penalty for encroachment on the holy spaces or articles by an unauthorized person is death. For the priests and Levites, security is an integral part of Tabernacle/Temple service alongside liturgical functions and music.  

God designates the offerings for the use of the priests and Levites and gives instructions for their ongoing distribution, including the tithes they must give to him. God reiterates that the Levites will have no land inheritance in Israel. They receive the tithes, the produce of the other tribes’ land, instead (though later they will receive the cities of refuge scattered throughout the land). In his Numbers commentary, Dennis T. Olson suggests “The long list of various sacrifices and offerings conjures up a picture of a lush and fertile land…” reinforcing the Tabernacle’s connection to the Eden garden.  

God commissions them to protect by denying access to holy areas and objects and to preserve by maintaining the sacrificial system, recalling and clarifying a new instance of the Genesis 2 mandate to tend and guard the garden.  

#Bible #Numbers 19-20 #death #water

After many accounts of death in judgment, 19 gives priestly instructions for the red heifer ritual in support of the purification of uncleanness resulting from an encounter with a dead body.  

In 20, the tribes arrive and Miriam dies at Kadesh. Some suggest Kadesh Barnea and this Kadesh may be two different locations in the wilderness, another example of the lack of clarity in wilderness geography. Commentators including @zugzwanged and Rabbi David Fohrman have noted Miriam’s connection to water and that, when she dies, the Israelites again face a lack of it.  

There is no water, so the congregation confronts Moses and again expresses a desire to have died in earlier circumstances. Despite having rejected the opportunity to go up into the fruitful land God desired to give them, they complain that the wilderness is not fruitful and well-watered.  

Moses and Aaron consult God, and the glory of the Lord appears, often a precursor to judgment in the wilderness narratives, but here, it is initially just giving instructions to meet the people’s need for water.  

Moses’ speech expresses apparent exasperation with the people, although it could be variously interpreted. Rather than obeying God’s instruction to speak to the rock, Moses strikes it twice with the staff. In his speech, Moses appears to, with Aaron, take credit for the water that flows forth rather than acknowledging God’s power.            

Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust me enough to show me as holy before the Israelites, therefore you will not bring this community into the land I have given them.” 

In contrast to Caleb, for instance, Moses and Aaron did not trust and failed to show God as holy before the Israelites.  

Moses communicates to the king of Edom that Israel would like to pass through his territory and offers impossible sounding terms – the Israelites would not take anything of any value. The king rejects Moses’ request. The Israelites walk around Edom south to the modern Gulf of Aqaba, east, and back north along the King’s Highway. Some commentators find parallels in this interaction between Israel and Edom and the interaction between Jacob and Esau as Jacob returned from Laban’s house to settle again in Canaan. Although Edom is descended from Esau and Israel from Jacob, the narratives, at least in their broad strokes, appear substantially dissimilar. Viewing Edom’s rejection as an inversion of the earlier interaction may prove fruitful, but at least in a surface reading, is unsatisfying.  

In the last vignette in 20, the Israelites arrive at Mount Hor. On the mountain, Moses, Aaron, and Eleazar, Aaron’s son hold a change of responsibility ceremony in which Moses removed Aaron’s priestly garments and clothed Eleazar with them. Aaron then dies and apparently remains on the mountain. It’s unclear whether Mount Hor ought to be associated with the Horites, which Deuteronomy 2 identifies as a Rephaim clan destroyed by (and intermarried with) Esau/Edom, and whether the association should color our interpretation of the ceremony and Aaron’s death. 

#Bible #Numbers 21 #war #rebellion

Chapter 21 consists of many short segments on warfare. Their focus is not on blood, strategy, or heroic exploits, instead relating the Israelites’ responses to encountering enemies and God’s interaction with his people.  

The first such story involves the king of Arad in the Negev. It appears he attacked the traveling Israelites and captured some. The Israelites respond by vowing to destroy the cities of Arad, which the text appears to take for granted is something God wants. There is no explanation here of why, but the language appears to foreshadow God’s commands in Joshua and elsewhere to destroy Canaanite cities. The location Hormah recalls Numbers 14, when the Israelites were defeated by the Canaanites all the way to a location of the same name.  

In her book In the Wilderness, Mary Douglas portrays Numbers as structured in a ring with alternating rungs of law and narrative. The Numbers 14 and 21 accounts sit opposite each other on a narrative rung whose stories share the theme of revolt.  

Next, the new generation of wilderness Israelites echo their parents’ complaints of Exodus 16 and Numbers 11. As above, the Numbers 11 and 21 food complaint accounts are opposite each other on a rung in Douglas’ literary structure. This time, God’s judgment comes swiftly in the form of biting snakes. The passage contains two different words for snake, including seraph, which to some interpreters suggests a fiery or poisonous snake. Fire as judgment recalls Sodom and Nadab and Abihu, and, for Douglas, the theophanies of the burning bush and the smoke and fire of Sinai. Looking back further, when the people abandon God’s order in the wilderness, he allows them to experience the pre-creation wilderness of Genesis 2 and its Genesis 3 post-Fall inhabitant, the serpent. Without God’s protection, the serpent’s realm yields many deaths.

As in the previous short story, when the Israelites experience pain, they turn to God. Moses intercedes for them, and God provides a solution – put a snake on a pole. Moses made a bronze snake and placed it on a pole. Assuming there wasn’t one already lying around, the process of casting a bronze snake would have taken some significant amount of time. Copper mining was a labor intensive, brutal process. Combining it with tin would require trade with distant lands and significant skill. Heating bronze to its melting point, forming a mold, and pouring the bronze in would all take a lot of time if people were dying by the hundreds waiting on the sign, a frustratingly slow resolution. “…if a snake had bitten someone, when he looked at the bronze snake he lived.” 

#Bible #Numbers 21 cont. #war

The Israelites travel north to the east of the rift valley, Dead Sea, and Jordan River, moving up into Moab. We can now start to identify where they might have been on the ground. Most of the wilderness itinerary consists of place names whose locations we do not know.

The travel account includes a series of locations and sections of poetry about them, apparently also a poem about Moses bringing forth water from the rock. 

As with Edom, Moses promises the king of the Amorites the Israelites will take nothing as they pass through his territory, but Sihon the Amorite king refuses entry and attacks. We learn little about the Amorites here, but in Genesis 15, they were the people group God identified to Abraham as the reason his descendants would not inherit the land right away. The Israelites defeat Sihon and settle in the cities of the Amorites, giving us a sense of the passage of time. Surely settlement of several cities would have taken months.   

Recalling Numbers 13-14, Moses again sends ‘spies’ in preparation for additional battles. Finally, the Israelites encounter the enigmatic Og of Bashan in battle at Edrei. We’ll later learn details suggesting he was a giant like the ones the ‘spies’ encountered at Hebron in Canaan. The battle language continues to prefigure Joshua – “So they defeated Og, his sons, and all his people, until there were no survivors, and they possessed his land.” 

#Bible #Numbers 22 #Balaam

Robert Alter identifies this passage’s frequent use of the verb “to see” in this story about a seer.

Timothy Ashley’s commentary contains a detailed description of an ancient inscription (date disputed, possibly as old as late 9thcentury BC) discovered at Tel Deir Alla in 1967, which clarifies for modern readers that Balaam son of Beor was a well-known, possibly near-mythical figure in the region. The wordplay here strongly suggests a satirical motive for the author. The supposedly great communicator with the gods hired by a king to curse a nation to military destruction is blind to a life-threatening spiritual appearance even his donkey can perceive. Jacob Milgrom points out that God must intervene to open the eyes of the seer. As with numerous earlier stories, the Bible’s view of the powerful is opposite that of the surrounding cultures. God alone is God.  Kings, giants, pagan prophets, and even other gods appear foolish and powerless in comparison.  

Several commentators (i.e. Dennis Olson, Timothy Ashley) identify Balaam’s donkey as the only animal in the Bible that talks after Genesis 3’s serpent (who most recognize as a spiritual being in animal form). Like Jonah’s fish, it behaves in an uncharacteristic manner as part of God’s preemptive discipline of one who will speak for God. 

Dennis Cole writes, “The theme of Yahweh's miraculous deliverance of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt rings throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, including numerous allusions in the Book of Numbers. References are made in three contexts to this theme in the Balaam accounts, twice in the context of the initial correspondence between Balaam and Balak (22:5,11), and in oracles two and three of Balaam (23:22; 24:8). 

After the Israelites’ defeat of Og and the Amorites, Balak the king of Moab concludes military force alone will not be sufficient, so he hires Balaam to provide spiritual resistance. In this story, Balaam appears to consistently side with God, but in Deuteronomy, we will learn he later advised Moab in separating the Israelites from God through temptation. He ultimately does what the king of Moab hired him to do, using temptation and deception, hallmarks of the serpent, to achieve the serpent’s purpose.  

#Bible #Numbers 23-24 #Balaam

Dennis Cole notes that this story of God’s use of a pagan spiritual leader follows stories of the failings of Moses, Aaron, Miriam, priests, and Levites, Israel’s spiritual leaders. When even those closest to him fail, he can use his enemies to accomplish his will.

Robert Alter identifies this series of three requests by Balak, sets of sacrifices, and attempts to curse that turn to blessing as parallel to the previous story’s three attempts to travel by donkey. In the previous story, Balaam’s donkey repeatedly thwarted Balaam’s progress. Here, Balaam’s pronouncements over Israel repeatedly thwart Balak’s hostile intent. Milgrom suggests that Balak’s tone changes from one of command to one of apparent pleading with Balaam by the end of the sequence.  

Balaam’s oracles each take poetic form and repeat themes of his narrative form statement from the previous chapter – that he can only say what God gives him to say. His oracles express God’s intent to bless Israel, contra Balak’s intent, instructing Balak in God’s nature and purpose for Israel and its enemies.  

At the beginning of 24, “And Balaam saw that it was good in the eyes of the Lord to bless Israel, and he did not go as on the times before to encounter omens, but turned his face toward the wilderness…and the spirit of God was upon him.” (Alter) Alter recognizes a difference in Balaam’s practice on the third iteration – rather than seeking omens, he speaks as the spirit comes upon him. In this third poem, he “hears El’s sayings” and sees the “vision of Shaddai,” yielding a blessing of abundant trees and waters even as he observes Israel in the wilderness. The Genesis 1 and 3 language of seeing what is good leads to an Eden-like blessing of God’s people. 

After Balak lashes out in anger at Balaam’s refusal to curse Israel, Balaam claims to be “open-eyed,” likely a reference to his recent experience with the donkey. He too, failed to see what God was doing but now claims he does. For Moab, Seth, and Edom/Seir, Israel will bring destruction. Amalek, Cain/the Kenites, Asshur, and Eber also will be destroyed (though we’re not told how or by whom).  

Though Israel is now in the wilderness, they will inherit blessing, and it is their enemies who will be judged.  

“And Balaam rose and went and returned to his place, and Balak, too, went on his way.” (Alter) 

#Bible #Numbers 25 #rebellion

After God shows his extraordinary faithfulness to Israel in the mountains “at the top of Peor,” we find Israel on the plain reject him in pursuit of another, local god, Baal Peor.

This time their rebellion takes the form of sexual immorality with Moabite women, leading to participation in pagan ritual, and ultimately worship.

God tells Moses to arrest and hang (likely impale on a pole) them before him to turn away his anger.

Moses orders the judges to execute the rebellious men.

Before any of this happens, a man (who we later find to be son of a leader of the tribe of Simeon) and a woman (later identified as the daughter of a Midianite leader) appear before the Israelite congregation as the people mourn over sin and judgment. Although it’s reasonable to assume the two were romantically involved, the story isn’t explicit about their relationship. Phinehas, son of the High Priest, Moses’ grandnephew, takes a spear and runs them both through. God receives this act apparently in lieu of his and Moses’ previous commands. “So the plague was stopped from the Israelites. Those that died in the plague were 24,000.” Bizarrely, the first we hear of the plague is after the event that ends it.

In retrospect, we may receive the plague as “the anger of the Lord [that] flared up against Israel.” In this view, God ordered the deaths of the leaders in a manner reminiscent of the elevation of the bronze serpent. Moses looked to the judges the Midianite Jethro had advised him to appoint (Exodus 18) to kill the perpetrators themselves. After Phinehas’ violent act, God “give[s] him a covenant of peace,” promising a permanent priesthood to him and his descendants.

The narrator saves the identities of the publicly rebellious couple until the end of the story to segue into God’s command to Moses to “Bring trouble to the Midianites and destroy them…” The same people who cared for Moses when he fled the Egyptians and advised him when he brought the Israelites out into the wilderness have now fallen from favor with God.  

#Bible #Numbers 26 #census

Jacob Milgrom views chapter 26 as the beginning of the final section of Numbers, calling that section “The Generation of the Conquest.”

“The principal narrative sequence of the Book of Numbers, consisting largely of a series of incidents of rebellion, is framed by a census at the beginning (chapter 1) and a census at the end…Here…the census is intended to lay the grounds for the division of the land as the Israelites encamp opposite Jericho…and…to indicate that the Wilderness generation fated not to enter the land has died out” -Robert Alter

Alter notes that references to Dathan and Abiram and Korah indicate their lines continued, but one to Judah’s sons Er and Onan (Genesis 38) recall theirs did not. One to the daughters of Zelophehad foreshadows the next chapter and its special consideration for the new generation’s inheritance in the land.

The commentary in the JPS Jewish Study Bible notes “a net loss of 1,820 males aged 20 and up” from chapter 1’s census. The old generation failed in its creation mandate to multiply. Some tribes, like Manasseh, have grown, others, i.e. Simeon, have significantly diminished.

Several commentators note relationships between the status of the tribes here and Jacob’s blessing of them in Genesis 49.  

Even this smaller total remains massively larger than a likely actual number of Israelites. One example of why this is true is the conquest of Jericho. Archaeology can tell us its size and likely population during its long history. At no time would it have posed any significant threat to a 600,000 person army. The total Israelite population supporting such an army would exceed 2 million people, making it the size of Chicago or Houston, the 3rd and 4th largest cities in the US.

There are possible explanations for the discrepancy. We have previously discussed the Hebrew word “elef,” commonly translated “thousand,” which can reasonably be interpreted instead as a clan or far smaller military unit. Alternately, Milgrom writes “There is…a relationship between the [numbers for each tribe] and the solar and lunar calendar as well as the synodical periods of the planets, computations well known the ancient Babylonian astronomers, which suggests the possibility that the tribal figures were made to correspond to celestial movements and thus present Israel as the…’armies of the Lord’…corresponding to the astral bodies, the Lord’s celestial armies.”

“…there was not a man among these who had been among those numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest when they numbered the Israelites in the desert of Sinai. For the Lord had said of them, ‘They will surely die in the wilderness.’ And there was not left a single man of them, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.” (Numbers 26:64-65 NET) 

#Bible #Numbers 27 #daughters #Joshua

Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, the daughters of a man who died without sons come to Moses, Eleazar, and the Israelite leaders to ask they be allowed to inherit. They emphasize their father was not part of Korah’s rebellion but “died for his own sin.”  

“So Moses brought their case before YHWH. The Lord said to Moses: ‘The daughters of Zelophehad have a valid claim.’” And God gave them a new law governing inheritance in the land as they camped outside it.  

God tells Moses to go up a mountain where he can see the land. He will not enter it “For in the wilderness of Zin when the community rebelled against me, you rebelled against my command to show me as holy before their eyes over the water—the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.” 

Moses asks “YHWH, the God of the spirits of all humankind” to appoint a leader. He uses a phrase similar to ones we see elsewhere “who will go out before them, and who will come in before them, and who will lead them out, and who will bring them in.” Milgrom, Alter, and Stephen Sherwood all associate this phrase with military action. None cites a reason why. It may be a reference to an ancient practice of sending out and receiving back the army in a kind of parade, the community celebrating departing warriors and communally discovering their shared fate when the army returned. But here, Moses uses pastoral imagery, “that the community of the Lord may not be like sheep that have no shepherd.” 

God tells Moses to commission Joshua, one who had remained in God’s presence in the tent of meeting after Moses himself had left and who did not refuse to enter the land with the rebellious generation. God’s instructions to delegate “some of your authority” and that Joshua would hear from God through the priest via the Urim appear to indicate Joshua’s relationship as leader will not be as intimate as Moses’ had been. The warrior leader and the priest will have separate authorities. 

“So Moses did as the Lord commanded him; he took Joshua and set him before Eleazar the priest and before the whole community. He laid his hands on him and commissioned him, just as the Lord commanded, by the authority of Moses.” (NET) 

#Bible #Numbers 28-30 #ritual

Following the change of command ceremony, God gives guidance concerning offerings, the ritual calendar of feasts, and vows.

Jacob Milgrom writes, “Having decided the questions of the apportionment of the land among the Israelites and the succession to Moses, the Torah’s next step is to establish the cultic calendar…Israel’s first duty upon settling in its land is to establish the proper lines of communion with the Lord through the medium of his cult.”

God reminds the new generation of the practices they need to follow to maintain relationship with him and each other in the land.

When we looked at God's initial command to the Israelites to invade Canaan in Exodus 23, we considered it as part of a pattern of judgment ending in restoration to a fruitful land and a new paradigm/covenant.

As Israel is encamped on the border of the land, they are experiencing the final stages of their own cycle of judgment. Rules for sacrifice, a ritual calendar, and keeping vows are God's paradigm for the new generation's faithfulness after the covenant-breaking old one died out.

#Bible #Numbers 31 #Midian #judgment

This is one of the more difficult passages in Scripture for us to receive. It is a direct command to attack another nation as representatives of God; kill men, women, and boys; and take animals and unmarried women as plunder. It then gives extraordinarily large numbers for both the Israelite force and those they captured. When the people fail to kill those they’ve been ordered to, Moses insists they follow through and do so.

I intend no rationalization or dismissal of the horror of God’s and Moses’ commands. They are appalling and likely intended to be received that way. Midian and Balaam sought to turn God’s covenant people away from him. God’s response here is brutal, and Moses’ unrelenting. 

It is difficult to know whether “Midian” here refers to the same family Moses lived with for forty years and married into or whether these are a distant part of a confederation of tribes spread over a large area and therefore unaware of Moses’ affiliation.

The directness of God’s response suggests the possibility of a close betrayal: “The Lord spoke to Moses: ‘Exact vengeance for the Israelites from the Midianites—after that you will be gathered to your people.’” Surely there is significance in God’s command to Moses, as he leads the people to the edge of the wilderness, to exact deadly vengeance on a people of the same name as those who saved his life and knew of YHWH when Moses fled Egypt across the wilderness.

The old generation of Israelites died in judgment for their rebellion. Before the new generation enters the land, God tells Moses to attack Midianites in judgment for theirs.  

Moses commands each tribe contribute an “eleph,” translated as “thousand” or military unit of indeterminate size, to the fighting force. Here, as above, “military unit” is likely the better translation.  

Phinehas, first recognized after he speared an Israelite and Midianite, supervises the “holy articles” and signal trumpets. Some early commentators interpreted the articles to include the Urim Joshua was directed to consult through the high priest in chapter 27.  

The Israelites “fought against the Midianites…and…killed every male.” It’s reasonable to interpret this in reference to those participating in the battle, not every male Midianite, since, as Milgrom and others note, some Midianites still live during the time of the Judges.

They kill five Midianite kings and the prophet Balaam we met earlier.  

“The Israelites took the women of Midian captive along with their little ones, and took all their herds, all their flocks, and all their goods as plunder. They burned all their towns where they lived and all their encampments. They took all the plunder and all the spoils, both people and animals.”

This account appears to comply with Deuteronomy 20's instructions for warfare. 

The Jewish Study Bible notes this passage paints a picture of annihilation, positing it is reasonable to receive it with a tinge of hyperbole, as ancient battle accounts tend toward, but the intended effect is clear. Moses further clarifies by chastising the Israelites for failing to kill boys and married women, which he then orders they do.  

“And all the little ones of the women who have not known lying with a male, let live.” (Alter) Alter’s translation notes claim a literal representation of the Hebrew. Some modern translations are less ambiguous and more salacious. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 gives instructions for female captives, demanding they not be treated as chattel. With all the potential mitigating passages in mind, this one remains the story of an appalling destruction of a people who deliberately sought to lead God’s people away from him, their fate echoing, Milgrom suggests, the Israelites’ own fear of destruction in the land expressed in Numbers 14. 

#Bible #Numbers 31 cont #purify #spoils

After the battle, God gives instructions for purification of people and objects. Although it’s often argued that purification laws have little to do with hygiene, it is interesting to note that people and objects exposed to blood and dead bodies are, in these regulations, subject to quarantine or cleansing by fire and water, strategies we still use today to prevent the spread of disease. God’s initial guidance for the Conquest in Exodus 23 includes the promise “You must serve the Lord your God, and…I will remove sickness from your midst. No woman will miscarry her young or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days.” Here, as the Israelites have defeated Midian and are preparing to enter the land to fight the Canaanites, God gives instructions we now recognize as effective in preventing the spread of disease.

Just as the Israelites plundered the Egyptians as they left Egypt, so they have plundered the Midianites as they prepare to enter the land. It appears most likely these numbers are inflated as a literary strategy to demonstrate God’s provision for his people. The Israelite herdsmen experience an overabundance of their kind of fruitfulness and, recalling Genesis 2’s Edenic blessings, gold. 

Beginning in Genesis 1, we’ve observed God’s desire to place people in a fruitful land where they can be in relationship with him. Their rebellion eventually demands judgment to restore land and relationship. The old Israelite generation and, most recently, the Midianites have experienced this terrible judgment, yet God preserves a remnant, the new Israelite generation, to go into the land. He reminds them of their responsibilities in relationship with him and each other and richly blesses them with abundant animal life and gold as they, God’s chosen nation, ready to enter as he promised their fathers. Although his judgment is overwhelming, he provides far beyond the people’s needs as they prepare for new life in the land. 

#Bible #Numbers 32

The tribes of Reuben and Gad, who had a lot of cattle, asked to stay on the east side of the Jordan where they found the land to be good for cattle.

Moses initially responds negatively, believing they are refusing to enter the land and refusing to fight alongside the other tribes in the Conquest. Moses recalls the events of Numbers 13-14:

Your fathers did the same thing when I sent them from Kadesh Barnea to see the land. When they went up to the Eshcol Valley and saw the land, they frustrated the intent of the Israelites so that they did not enter the land that the Lord had given them. So the anger of the Lord was kindled that day, and he swore, ‘Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of the men twenty years old and upward who came from Egypt will see the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the Lord wholeheartedly.’ So the Lord’s anger was kindled against the Israelites, and he made them wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until all that generation that had done wickedly before the Lord was finished.

He accuses them of being “a brood of sinners” who will increase God’s anger and destroy the Israelites.

The two tribes volunteer to go before the others into the land to fight and not return until the inheritance of the others is won.

Moses instructs Joshua and Eleazar to hold them to their promise or else deny them the right to live east of the Jordan and instead give them an inheritance alongside the other tribes in Canaan/Israel.

“So Moses gave to the Gadites, the Reubenites, and to half the tribe of Manasseh son of Joseph the realm of King Sihon of the Amorites, and the realm of King Og of Bashan, the entire land with its cities and the territory surrounding them.” 

#Bible #Numbers 33 #wilderness

The final chapters of Numbers read almost like administrative notes.

Moses recorded a list of journey segments in the wilderness wanderings beginning in Egypt as they approached the Reed Sea crossing, continuing to Sinai, then Kadesh, and on with the new generation to the Jordan River across from Jericho. Most of the listed places are unknown to us today. James Hoffmeier has done compelling work on the sites inside Egypt, but once across the sea, we can do little better than speculate with circumstantial evidence.

It's unclear why this extensive, specific list is important to the biblical authors/editors. Campsites in the wilderness unknown to nearly all who’ve ever read about them seem out of place in an often-sparse narrative. Possibly this is a way of meditating on God’s faithfulness to this continually rebellious people across time and space.

In his Numbers commentary, Jay Sklar proposes the list as a shorthand for memory, prompting recall of the stories that occurred at some of the named locations, stories of God’s deliverance and mercy, of the Israelites’ rebellion, of God’s resulting judgment and his forgiveness.  

#Bible #Numbers 33 cont - 34 #Canaan

Recalling Exodus 23, 33, and 34 for the new generation, God tells Moses to instruct the Israelites:

“When you have crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you must drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images, all their molten images, and demolish their high places. You must dispossess the inhabitants of the land and live in it, for I have given you the land to possess it. You must divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families…But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land before you, then those whom you allow to remain will be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your side, and will cause you trouble in the land where you will be living. And what I intended to do to them I will do to you.” 

Moses’ warning bears prophetic significance that will become evident in coming books, but for now, a generation sits on the border of the land promised to their fathers centuries earlier, an opportunity to go up and realize the blessing God intends for his people.  

After instructions for entering the land, Moses gives the Israelites its dimensions. Some of the place names he uses are familiar to readers of the wilderness narratives. The southern border stretches from the Salt/Dead Sea to the Great/Mediterranean Sea. The western border is the coast. The northern border is comprised of names whose locations are no longer certain. It appears to cross into modern Syria and be aspirational, possibly only achieved during David and Solomon’s time. The eastern border stretches south along the Jordan River back to the Salt/Dead Sea.  

Finally, God tells Moses to appoint Joshua and Eleazar the priest to allocate the land within those borders. They will work with a leader, who God names, from every tribe. Caleb son of Jephunneh serves as Judah’s.  

#Bible #Numbers 35 #Canaan

God tells Moses the Israelites must give the Levites a total of 48 towns with surrounding lands for stock grazing. Six are to be cities of refuge. The Levites don’t receive a division of the land but do receive many of the cities in the whole of Canaan. In much of the narrative to this point, cities are closely linked with violence and abusive power. The man Levi lost the favor of his father for his violent actions at the city Shechem. Now his descendants, since dedicated to God’s service, inherit many of the cities in the land. We are left to wonder which element, service to God or history of violence, will win out as they take position of their fragmented inheritance.  

God then establishes the rules for the functioning of the cities of refuge and, recognizing the threat of brother against brother violence (Genesis 4) and recalling the Noahic covenant (Genesis 9), the necessity of bringing justice to one who has committed murder.  

“You must not pollute the land where you live, for blood defiles the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed there, except by the blood of the person who shed it. Therefore do not defile the land that you will inhabit, in which I live, for I the Lord live among the Israelites.” 

#Bible #Numbers 36 #daughters

Numbers closes by returning to the daughters who sought to inherit from their father who had died without sons. Milgrom quotes D.T Olson’s Death of the Old and Birth of the New, “The accounts of the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27 and 36…form an inclusio for the events and organization of the new generation whose emergence is marked by the second census list in chapter 26.”

Here Moses clarifies that if the daughters inherit, they must marry within the tribe so the lands stay with the tribe.  

#Bible #Numbers recap

Numbers ends with some administrative guidance, not exactly the narrative fireworks one might hope for leading up to the conquest of a new land.

The introduction to Milgrom’s commentary is worth quoting at length:

“The generic variety that characterizes Numbers surpasses that of any other book of the Bible. Note these examples: narrative (4:1-3), poetry (21:17-18), prophecy (24:3-9), victory song (21:27-30 pre-Israelite), prayer (12:13), blessing (6:24-26), lampoon (22:22-35), diplomatic letter (21:14-19), civil law (27:1-11), cultic law (15:17-21), oracular decision (15:32-26), census list (26:1-51), temple archive (7:10-88), itinerary (33:1-49).

This literary richness adds to the difficulties of finding the book’s inner cohesion. However, topographical and chronological data clearly provide the main organizational criteria. The Book of Numbers describes the journey of the Israelites from Mount Sinai to the borders of Canaan. Their forty-year trek comprises forty stations (see chap. 33) that can be subsumed under three main stages: the wilderness of Sinai (1:1-10:10)…; the vicinity of Kadesh (10:11-20:13)…; and from Kadesh to the steppes of Moab (20:14-36:13)…” 

At Sinai, God organizes the people as an expeditionary military force – census, order of march, leadership structure, the Tabernacle as power center. The people, however, repeatedly rebel. They want better food or water, are afraid of enemies or nostalgic for their enslaved past, covet power or position, disbelieve God, and are angry with each other. In each case, they decide their own agenda supersedes God’s plan to bring them into a fruitful land and enduring relationship with him. When their agenda threatens to thwart his, God responds with judgment.

After a leaders’ reconnaissance of the land, when most of the leaders and apparently all the adult generation decide God’s plan is untenable and that they will kill the few leaders loyal to God and return to Egypt, God sentences that generation to death in the wilderness. From that disturbing event, two leaders emerge because of their faithfulness – Joshua, who had remained in the presence of God after even Moses had left (Exodus 33:11) and Caleb, who had “a different spirit and followed [God] fully.” Only they will survive with the new generation to enter the land.

Following their sentence to die in the wilderness, various groups continue to rebel and experience God’s judgment. Not even the Levites, Aaron, Miriam, and Moses avoid rebellion and consequences. The impression is one of pervasive doubt of God’s faithfulness and provision, pervasive desire to pursue one’s own agenda.

With God’s help the new generation successfully defeats the nations that attack them, including the giant Og and the powerful Amorites.

God thwarts Balaam and Moab’s repeated attempts to curse the Israelites from the mountain heights, even as below they succumb to the temptation of Moab’s women.

The book ends in the plains to the east of the Jordan River with guidance for living in the land, a hopeful foreshadowing of books to come.