Lecture

I. Preparation for Conquest of the Promised Land (1:1-10:36)

The book of Numbers is the story of Israel in the wilderness. Why were they there? The answer is that they started out there because Numbers tells the story starting out from Mt. Sinai after the Israelites had completed the process of receiving the Law, had built all the things they needed to worship God, had been organized as a people. They were ready to enter into the Promised Land.

A. Soldier Census and Camp Organization (1:1-2:34)

Indeed in Numbers 1, we see them leaving Mt. Sinai, organized and counted according to military units; that is, men who draw the sword for battle. But you know, at the end of the book there is another census in Numbers 26 that indicates they had to be counted again for battle because in between a whole new generation had grown up, and the reason for there being a whole new generation was sin, disobedience, lack of faith.

The story begins at Sinai; the Israelites leave and head for the Promised Land. They are going basically to the north. And we find that in the process of traveling they also are learning more about God’s covenant. This is an important thing to appreciate about the book of Numbers, a book in which there is a mixture of historical activity, travels and events, and even battles, and reception of law.

As the people come into new circumstances, God explains laws that will help them live within His will in those new circumstances. As they encounter problems that they had difficulty figuring out because they could not extrapolate of the principles and paradigms of the Law at Sinai—God mercifully explained those laws to them through Moses. The book of Numbers is a combination of history and law, on and off through the various chapters.

B. Organization and Laws Related to the Levites (3:1-4:49)

Early on in the third and fourth chapters of the book, we get laws related to the Levites. It is helpful to appreciate the fact that God chose one of the tribes of Israel to be His special ministers. The whole nation was His people and His priests in one sense; but in particular, the tribe of Levi constituted the clergy. It was they who were specially entrusted with keeping His covenant laws, and teaching the people the content of those laws, and seeing to it that the nation remained pure. Of course, from the tribe of Levi came the priests; in particular, all those descended from Aaron constituted the priests.

C. Elimination of Defilement (5:1-6:27)

We have in chapters 5 and 6 some laws relating to the elimination of defilement—again, the kind of thing that is related to the purity of the people and along the lines of some of what was introduced in the book of Leviticus. Also in chapters 5 and 6 there is some teaching to the Israelites about property, the importance of respect for it, about adultery, and about the taking of vows. Vows are not something that the New Testament spends much time on, but in the Old Testament, especially for certain categories of people, vows were very important. They represented a commitment to serving God in a particular way, and so regulations for how vows are to be taken properly are provided in those early chapters.

D. Laws and Events Related to Worship and the Tabernacle (7:1-9:23)

With chapters 7-9, there are quite a number of laws and events that relate to worship at the tabernacle. The tabernacle had just been built as the Israelites were at Mt. Sinai and now it was their responsibility to learn to use it, for the priests to learn how to take it down and put it back up again day after day as they traveled in the wilderness, so that it could be used properly for worship. The tabernacle was a portable tent shrine and it represented God’s presence in the midst of the people, especially as the ark that held the Ten Commandments was in the midst of the tabernacle. Through it God represented himself among the people and His glory was manifested there. So laws concerning the tabernacle and worship thereat and its transportation are provided for us in chapters 7-9.

E. Departure from Mt. Sinai (10:1-36)

With chapter 10, we actually have the story of the departure from Mt. Sinai. The Israelites are on the road. Now they will be on the road unfortunately for thirty-nine years. They don’t know that yet; as far as they know they are going to head straight for the Promised Land and enter into the land of Canaan and begin their conquest of that land under God’s good grace. It could have been that way, but unfortunately, as the book goes on to describe, the people sinned against God.

II. Wilderness Years (11:1-25:18)

If we think of chapters 1-10 as a kind of first third of the book, an opening section—Part One let’s say—we can think then of chapters 11-25 as a kind of middle section. We will call chapters 11-25 Part Two of the book of Numbers. This is the section of the book where we read about those long years of wandering in the wilderness. What happened? Why were the Israelites stuck in the huge Sinai Peninsula going around from place to place and not making it into the Promised Land? What happened were two kinds of things that indicated lack of faith: one was regular and constant grumbling; a second was the Israelites chickened out from entering the Promised Land.

A. God Judges Complainers (11:1-12:16)

We read in chapters 11 and 12 how the people complained about their food. They didn’t like the food that they were getting. They didn’t like the fact that God provided for them, daily, the same good nutritious stuff called “manna.” They began to complain about it. Imagine giving people everything they actually need, but wanting more. It is not hard to imagine at all is it, because that is what we do. It is natural with human nature.

But in those same chapters, there is also an interesting account of how Aaron and Miriam complain about Moses. Now Aaron is Moses’ older brother and Miriam is his older sister. They were with him, they helped him, they supported him through all these events—the trials in Egypt, and the Exodus from Egypt, and the year spent at Mt. Sinai, and so on. But people can get tired of what they are used to. They can become dissatisfied with circumstances that don’t move as quickly as they would want them to, and they can single out somebody and begin to complain about some aspect of his leadership or character, or in this case his family.

We read that Moses had married a Cushite woman. The Cushites in the Old Testament were from the area of Africa that is called the Sudan. In other words, Moses had married a black woman, a woman who was not exactly of his race. It may well be that Aaron and Miriam were not usually racist in their thinking, but in this instance they adopted a racist posture and complained about that woman. God took care of the situation. It was an affront to Moses’ leadership and it was an attack on a black woman. And God turned Miriam white, white with leprosy. Shocked and corrected, they appealed to God for mercy and He did indeed heal them and there was no more talk of criticism of Moses’ Cushite wife.

But it was characteristic of what was going on among the people. They left Egypt, were glad to get out, wanted to be headed for the Promised Land; but as they encountered difficulties, as they encountered just the time involved, as they encountered trials of traveling, they began to grumble.

B. Kadesh Barnea (13:1-15:41)

A second big event that occurred during that same block of material in the book of Numbers is the fact that the Israelites chickened out from entering into the Promised Land. Numbers 13 tells the story of sending scouts in to look over the land of Canaan. Each tribe sent a representative scout or spy. They traveled around the land, they looked it over, they saw the cities, they saw the countryside, they saw the agricultural areas, and they came back and gave a report to Moses and the people that described the wonderful land, a land where God would indeed bless them, where they could be happy and at home. But they also described the inhabitants of that land as giants.

We have no reason to think that anything but a very small number of them were tall like Goliath. Goliath was a part of a very small ethnic group that could grow to his very substantial stature. But they were not all basketball players; most of them were normal height. Yet the scouts were afraid—this from people who had been delivered by God from Egypt miraculously, this from people who had been through the Ten Plagues, from people who have seen God defeat the Amelikites before them back in the book of Exodus as they were approaching Mt. Sinai, from people who have been fed miraculously and provided for every step of their journey, from people who crossed the Red Sea on dry land. Now, they were afraid to fight.

You can understand some of it from a human point of view. Here are people who have never fought before. They were never part of any army; they were not good at what they did. They had a little bit of practice and a couple of encounters in the wilderness. But to think of themselves as fighting now as conquerors, rather than just defending themselves as they traveled along in the wilderness, that was hard for many people. Only two of the scouts, Joshua and Caleb, said, “Let’s go, we can take it. God will be with us.”

Ten of them said, “We haven’t got a chance. We were as grasshoppers in their sight.” That lack of faith meant that God turns them back and lets them wander in the wilderness until the new generation grows up. In other words what God does is to say, “Since you do not have the faith after all I have done for you to be my soldiers and enter into this Promised Land, then I will let you die out in the wilderness. I will let you wander around for year after year until most of you are dead and a whole new generation is grown up. I will let your children enter the Promised Land, but I will not let you.”

C. Rebellion and God’s Reaffirmation of the Priesthood (16:1-19:22)

So that is actually what happened. We see the Israelites traveling around the wilderness. As they travel, year after year, they begin to grumble as well. One of the big events takes place in chapters 16-19, where there is a rebellion led by Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. They begin to talk about how wonderful Egypt was—all the vegetables they ate, the fresh vegetables, and all the nice times they had there, all the countryside that they enjoyed, and so on. “We come out here in this wilderness and we are just going to die.” They begin blaming Moses for that and they launch a rebellion and launched a rebellion against him with the idea that they would assume leadership and actually lead the people back to Egypt. How soon we forget! God handles that rebellion very efficiently. He causes the earth to open and swallow them up—an earthquake-like fissure opens up in the ground, and they and those with them are simply swallowed up by the earth.

D. Defeat of Enemies East of the Jordan (20:1-25:18)

This does not mean, however, it is a good time in every way. The Israelites are inclined to all sorts of things that are far from what they should be. When we come to chapter 20, for example, we find the Israelites near the end of their journey. They are in Moab, which is a country that is just to the east of the Promised Land—right across the Jordan River. Basically all they will have to do is cross through part of Moab and then ford the Jordan and enter into Canaan and begin the conquest. From one point of view it looks like it is fine; they are ready to go, and things will go well. But some complications ensue.

The king of Moab is a character named Balak. He knows that his own forces will be quite inadequate to attack and prevent the Israelites from moving through his territory. Moab at this time was newly settled and probably had just a very small number of citizenry capable of coming out and forming a volunteer defense force. Balak gets the idea that if he cannot defeat the Israelites militarily maybe he can defeat them spiritually. In particular, he has a couple of things in mind. The first option is to hire a prophet. There is a well-known prophet to the east named Balaam. This prophet Balaam is one who has a reputation as being able to prophesy in the name of various gods and goddesses.

Balak sends messengers to hire Balaam to come and to prophesy in the name of Yahweh—the Hebrew for “Lord,” the God of the Israelites. His theory is that if he can get this prophet (these prophets are supposed to be in good with the gods) to curse the nation of Israel maybe that will turn them back and prevent them from going through his territory, perhaps taking some of it in the process of their conquest. When Balaam agrees to go, he says to Balak, “Now remember, I can only prophesy what this god Yahweh tells me to prophesy.” It may have been something of a kind of an idle boast in the first instance, but God does in fact speak through Balaam.

Visualize this scene in chapters 22, 23, and 24: Balak has a whole group of government officials up on a high hill. They are standing there with Balaam the prophet, and looking forward to seeing how Balaam will curse the Israelites. And Balaam opens up his mouth and says things like this, “Balak brought me from Aram, the king of Moab from the eastern mountains. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘Curse Jacob for me; come, denounce Israel.’ How can I curse those whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce those whom the Lord has not denounced? From the rocky peaks I see them, from the heights I view them. I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous. May my end be like theirs!”

And Balak, of course, said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I brought you to curse my enemies, but you have done nothing but bless them!” Try after try Balak gave Balaam one more chance, but Balaam kept prophesying as God put the words in his mouth. In spite of the fact that God’s people had been so disobedient, in spite of the fact those Israelites had flaws and faults and grumbled a lot, in spite of their limitations, in spite of their weaknesses, God notified even the pagans that He was going to bless His people, make them mighty, and fulfill His promises concerning them to Abraham.

A very bad thing happens right after the Balaam incident. The Israelites are at a location called Baal of Peor, part of Moab, and they get into one of the most severe, sad religious practices of the day—that is, ritual prostitution. Chapter 25 of Numbers tells of one instance of the corruption of the people: how they engaged in the sexual practices that accompanied worship in the corrupt Moabite way of doing things, as people worshiped Baal and his girlfriend in the mythology of that day, Asherah. Part of what they did was have sex with prostitutes. The Israelites get into this as well. A plague ensues, and God stops that plague only when the Israelites take firm action and even kill the perpetrators. But it is a sad time and it is an indication of how God’s people tend, easily enough, to turn away from Him.

III. New Census and Preparation for Conquest (26:1-36:13)

The third part of the book, chapters 26-36, involves the new census and the preparation for the conquest. A lot of time has passed; there is actually the passage of approximately thirty-eight years of time within the space of just a few verses.

A. Instructions and Preparations for Entering the Promised Land (26:1-30:16)

The second census is taken in chapter 26. The people are ready now. The count is of those who have basically been born and grown up in the wilderness. It is time to get ready for the entering into the Promised Land. This brings questions with it, for example a group of women who are all the daughters of one Israelite named Zelophehad. They come to Moses and say, “We are almost ready to enter into the Promised Land, the troops are being counted, everybody is organized, the invasion is being put into motion, but our father died without leaving any sons.” The usual cultural expectation is that it is the sons who inherit the land and then they make sure that the women also get their fair share. The boys look out for the girls, the men look out for the women; that is how it works within the family. “But we have no brothers. What are we going to do?”

Moses brings their concern to God. And God gives them the answer that if there are no men in the family to inherit land of course the women must inherit. He instructed Moses that they must marry within their tribe so that the land must stay where maximum access to the family can be provided. After clearing up that and other kinds of questions, then the Israelites do prepare to enter the Promised Land.

B. Defeat of Midianites and Allocation of Land (31:1-35:34)

They are still on the east side of the Jordan River, so the chapters from 31-35 in this book talk about some battles that they fight on the east side of the Jordan where they are starting the process of entering the Promised Land. The Promised Land does go east of the Jordan, and so they must take care of that minor portion of the territory that they want to control first. All the tribes get together and they attack first the Midianites, then they attack other groups as well, and they begin to settle in the eastern regions of the Jordan River, across the Jordan from the main part of the Promised Land.

Moreover they receive information about a variety of laws, about offerings, about vows, about festivals, and even more information about how inheritance laws will work. You can see that there is a combination here beginning to take the land and wanting properly to possess it—God wanting them to possess it in an equitable way, to have access for everybody to that land. In modern times, most of the revolutions that have been fought have been fought over land, people who do not have access to ownership of land fighting for that right.

C. Fulfillment of Inheritance (36:1-13)

God wanted His people to distribute their land properly and fairly, and have everybody get equal access to the land. So concerns in the book of Numbers, as they will also be reflected in the book of Deuteronomy, tend toward this direction. There is that expectation that it is just not a matter of getting there and capturing the territory, but it is a matter of being a righteous people who occupy the land fairly, and to distribute it among themselves fairly according to God’s design so that everybody is treated equally, everybody is a brother and a sister, everybody is receiving the land and caring about his neighbor as himself in the way that God designed. The book of Numbers comes to a close with the conquest starting and with the land, in a small way, being possessed, and with God’s nation, for all their faults, finally entering into Canaan.