Lecture

We begin now lecture nineteen, emphasizing the book of Numbers. There are, however, a few items leftover in Leviticus which should be briefly mentioned. We have discussed the five feasts of the Jewish year and this takes us down to chapter twenty-five. But in twenty-five, we have the reference to the larger cycles.

Every seventh year in Israel was to be a sabbatical year. We speak of sabbatical years only in connection with university professors who take a year off every seven years, theoretically, in order to do some special work. But in the Hebrew system, they had a Sabbath of rest for the land every seventh year. We count our years more by decades. Such and such a decade of the such and such century. We have more of the emphasis on the decimal system. But in the Jewish sabbatical year, the land would lay fallow. This was a good thing for the land, better than they knew.

At the same time, society was readjusted somewhat. They had a system of slavery; it might almost be called the indentured servant idea. A man, a Hebrew, would be a slave only for six years, and in the seventh year, he would go free. Debts were forgiven every seventh year. We might wonder if this would be practical. How did they make out not being able to plant anything on the seventh year? The answer is they made out perhaps better than we do because they received the blessing of God. God promised to bless them on the sixth year enough to give them a blessing that would outlast the seventh year. By these methods, you see, society was stabilized, and the accumulation of wealth was forbidden but also the accumulation of misery was somewhat prevented.

Then there was a seventh sabbatical year. It says in verse eight, “Thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.” We usually speak of a jubilee as the fiftieth year. According to our reckoning, it would be the forty-ninth year; if you count the year on both ends, it would be fifty years. It was the seventh sabbatical.

The word jubilee means blowing of trumpets. Every Jewish year began with the blowing of trumpets, but this was a very, very special year; and of course, the trumpets were blown very emphatically, and I suppose for a long time and loudly. This was not only a time when debts were forgiven and slaves were freed, but this really was the first land reform in history and has some intrinsic interest from that angle. The people would go back to their old homestead. The property in the towns would not revert to the original person, but in the unwalled villages and the country estates, the farms would go back to the ancestral families. The farms of Israel could not be sold. The land was entailed as we would say. Normally it would go through the male line. Although, there was also provision for the daughters in case there were no sons. Provisions for the daughters to inherit, there was a famous case in the book of Numbers of the daughters of Zelophehad, which were forbidden to marry outside of the tribe so that the property would not go across tribal boundaries. Nonetheless, the women also had the right to hold property this way.

Again, the practical result of this provision would be that there would be not large land owners who would grind down the faces of the poor; the human tendency that we see all around us. Practical result was to give to the Israelites a stable, happy and healthy society and a good verse summarizing this ideal is in Leviticus 25 verse 10, inscribed in our Liberty Bell, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

The rest of the chapter tells about the importance of helping the poor. If thy brother hath become poor, verse 34 and 35, and cannot support himself among you, then you should take care of him. The idea is that you should not loan to the poor so much as to give them what they need. But there is also provision for loaning. We should not think that the Jews did not have ordinary credit arrangements and interest too. This has been discussed by Dr. Speiser in a note there in his book, Oriental and Biblical Studies, which I referred to in another connection. They could indeed give money to the brother and charge interest for it. But the prohibition really, if you study it carefully in chapter 25 verse 35 using Dr. Speiser’s suggestions, what you have is a provision whereby a man would get a loan at a discount and would pay the interest; that is to say, an advance. Then if he could not pay the loan at the due time, he could be taken into slavery, but the interest would cease and the second interest, further interest, was forbidden because if he would have to pay further interest while he was still in slavery, he would never get rid of his loan and get free again. This would give him a chance to earn enough so that he would be able to pay back the loan in full and would become free again. Therefore, it is not that the Israelite was forbidden to take interest from his loans, but he was forbidden to take undue interest, a second interest, what would very properly be called usury and put him in a situation that would make it impossible for him ever to pay it back and to regain his freedom.

Also, there is the law of redemption that would help the poor. If a man grew poor, he would, if he really had to, would sell his farm. If he sold his farm, it would eventually come back to the family in the jubilee year. But it would be quite possible, and indeed, it was the duty of a near kinsmen to buy that farm back and give it to the poor man. This would be redeeming the land of the poor kinsmen. So the kinsmen redeemer, as it is sometimes called, is typical, of course, of the work of Christ for us in a very real way, but it had a practical social value that it would keep families together and would lay an obligation on one member of the family to help another. The family units were stable, and the society was more stable as long as these laws were carried out.

That leads us, of course, to the last chapters. Chapter 26 gives a warning to the children of Israel of what would happen if these laws were not carried out. The warnings here are very serious warnings. God says that if you despise my statutes, I will appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning fever. All kinds of distress in verse 16 and following. If you continue in sin, verse 18, says he will bring drought upon you and the heavens will be iron and the earth bronze, and they would finally be scattered into all places. Some have thought that this means that the book of Leviticus was written after the captivity. I think we should emphasize that the captivity in Babylon was not the only tragedy that happened to ancient Israel. There was the constant danger of a dispersion and of subjugation and, indeed, they were subjugated many times by the different judges and by the wars of the period of the monarchy, but it did eventuate, indeed, in the Babylonian captivity. There is no mention, of course, of Babylon in the Pentateuch; there is no emphasis upon even Jerusalem. All of these laws and histories concern the times before the establishment of the monarchy and before the choice of Jerusalem as a capital city and before the great empires of the Syrian, and Babylon became a menace to Israel in the later days of the monarchy.

The last chapter of Leviticus is one that we cannot pay much attention to. It gives details of the evaluation by the priest of the things which a pious Israelite would vow to the tabernacle and to the use of the Lord in the temple. There are standard values given for male and female servants that would be given for the use of the temple of various ages and also for animals that might be given as well.

Now we turn to the book of Numbers. The book of Leviticus concerns the laws of worship and the carrying on of the business of the priests. It would have been given largely at Mount Sinai, perhaps entirely at Mount Sinai. It is not impossible that some of the regulations were added to during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness by Moses, but the basic part of it at least would have been given at Sinai.

Now in the book of Numbers, we turn back to history. Leviticus had been largely legal matters. But in Numbers we pick up the history again of the Israelites who had been camped at Mount Sinai and now for a year the tabernacle now was set up, the priestly worship was begun, and it was time to move out. God had taken them to Mount Sinai on purpose, in order that he might well the children of Israel into a nation, into His nation, into a worshipping nation, yes, indeed also, into a fighting nation, in order that they might be ready to conquer the land of Palestine. The natural thing to do, the thing that they were expecting to do, was to move north from Sinai, straight into Palestine by what we would call the Southern Gateway and conquer the hill country of the south toward Hebron and then move on up over the rest of the land. They were to prepare to do that and this is what the book of Numbers is about.

A brief outline of the book of Numbers: the first fourteen chapters deal with the preparations for leaving Sinai and the trip from Sinai to Kadesh Barnea. Chapter 10 would be the dividing chapter. It was in chapter 10 that they actually left Sinai.

When they went to Kadesh Barnea, we remember that there was a great debacle when they attempted to go into Palestine through the Southern Gateway and because of the faithlessness of the ten spies, they did not proceed to that war and finally were beaten when they did not go in ill advisedly. And so they were condemned to forty years of wandering. We speak a lot about this forty years of wandering, but really we know very little about it. Only five chapters—fifteen to twenty—tell about that period. Just a few incidents here and there and the rest we can surmise the children of Israel were scattered and were apostate. It was a generation of wrath.

Numbers goes on in chapter 21 to 25 to tell how they got together and left Sinai in a new movement and then journeyed on toward Canaan. Journeyed through the lands of Moab and Edom and came to the borders of the Transjordan country that they would occupy and then go across the river. Chapters 26 to 36 complete the book. This includes the conquest of Transjordan and the final appointment of Joshua to take the place of Moses because the book of Numbers takes us up to about the time of the death of Moses just as Deuteronomy does. Deuteronomy gives us the last speeches of Moses but Deuteronomy is, you might almost say, the conclusion of the book of Numbers. It ends about where Numbers ends with the death of Moses as we shall see when we turn to the book of Deuteronomy.

Now to turn back to the book of Numbers in more detail, we have to begin with a series of very uninteresting statistics. Uninteresting, I say, and yet statistics have a good bit to teach us too. Of course, these statistics, these numbers, give us the reason why the book is called the book of Numbers. The book in the Hebrew is called Bəmiḏbar after the main word of the first verse in Hebrew, which is ‘in the wilderness.’ “The Lord spoke unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai.” But the Greek Bible, the Septuagint, calls it Numbers and the English has taken the title from that source.

Actually, I feel it is a misnomer. The children of Israel are counted here, it is true, they are numbered and this is regularly referred to as a census. There is another census we remember later on in the book in chapter 26. Here we have again a numbering of the people. And of course, there are critics who have said that the second numbering is simply a repetition of the first numbering and that we have here two different traditions, and they have been welded together and one to do with one document and the other to do with the other document. I think that misses entirely and in our usual conceptions we miss the purpose of the numbering here.

The ancient scribes were not interested just in statistics the way we are; they did not take a census every ten years. These men who were numbered, and you notice it was only the men, and they were numbered only from twenty years old and upward. Actually, the Hebrew word for numbering is a word that specifies more the arrangement of the people and the calling of them up to battle. This was not a numbering; this was a mustering of the troops. The troops were organized; they were organized tribe by tribe and by their thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens. Men were appointed over them. The heads of the fathers are specified here: these would be nobles; these would be four-star generals with Moses and Joshua, of course, leading the whole group because Moses directed the war though Joshua actually carried it out. These men were organized for battle.

Why were there two numberings? Very obviously because there were two campaigns. This was a preparation for the campaign of taking Palestine through the Southern Gateway. It did not succeed. Because of the faithlessness of the people, the faithlessness of the ten spies and their bad report, the people turned back. Then the Lord condemned them. They wandered in the wilderness for forty years.

Later they went into Palestine through the eastern gateway, passed Jericho. In order to go into possess the land, it was proper and necessary for them to be mustered again. So the second numbering is a second preparation for a second campaign. That campaign succeeded under the faithful leadership of Joshua and when the generation of wrath had been healed in the wilderness. And so what we have here, actually, is an ordering of the troops. The numbers here are of great significance and the division into tribes and into different groups was, of course, a very necessary thing.

It does bring up the question, I suppose, of the great numbers of people here. It turns out that there were some 606,000 fighting men. From that is usually concluded that there were approximately two-million, maybe a few more people if you count women and children. How would they be able to live? Well, of course, they could live for a short time. They had their flocks and herds and unless their flocks and herds were completely killed by drought or something, they could get along. They got along just the way Bedouin Arabs have gotten along for many years. Of course, the Bedouin Arabs do use the camel. These people in their offerings and in their daily life, as far as we can see, did not use the camel. But they did have their flocks and herds. I think we should realize that Sinai is not all barren desert and there are parts of the year when they can go out and the animals can feed on the little bushes just as our range cattle out west feed on the mesquite bushes. They do not have large ranges of grass, but they do have, in the semi-arid territories out west, cattle can be raised. And so the children of Israel did.

Now, I think we may emphasize that though the children of Israel settled together at the foot of Sinai, at the foot of these large mountains where they would be normally more springs than otherwise, and, indeed, there might have been just a little bit more rain, as I think I suggested previously, than there is there now, the children of Israel did stay together for a short time on this trip which was only an eleven day trip if you march right along from Sinai to Kadesh Barnea. You can see how they would exist for this short time, but how did they exist for forty years in the wilderness? Well, I think the answer here is that the Israelites, in the forty years, pretty well split up and fanned out over the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai Peninsula would not support a great number of people in any one place, but actually they did not live and did not travel just like boy scouts on parade. The children of Israel were nomads. The Sinai Peninsula has supported nomads in time since and in times before.

The Nabataean kingdom around the time of Christ was a large kingdom and it was composed of Bedouin Arabs who lived all through the Sinai and up through the lands of Edom and Transjordan. The children of Israel did just that very thing. They wandered wherever they could find bushes, wherever they could find a little bit of water for their herds. The practical result of this dispersion was that a great many of them probably never saw Moses again. They did not care; they were apostate; they were not bound to the temple; they resisted Moses, and they refused the temple. Moses kept the temple going, and those who were faithful, because, of course, there was a remnant, the Levites and the priests surely and some others, did come to Moses at the temple and did get the blessing, but great numbers were out in the scattered areas of Sinai and were lost as far as the worship of the Lord is concerned. They were lost, too; this is why they are called the generation of wrath. This is why it is said in Amos that they worshipped idols and other gods in the desert.

The real problem to me is not how they dispersed, I can understand that, but how did they get together again? And why it is that people have special movements and special movements of the spirit is beyond our understanding. The Lord does these things. His Spirit works in wonderful ways. And so it may well be that at the end of this forty years, when God’s good time had come, He just laid His Spirit upon people and perhaps there were two or three powerful evangelists who went up and down through the Sinai Peninsula and called the people back to God. Or it may be that at that particular time there was a series of very bad years and heavy droughts and the people had to come together in order to get a little bit of grass and bushes for their flocks. When they were together, they found that it was time to move out. Then it was that the Spirit of God moved them. So it may have been a combination of providence and special grace that got the children of Israel moving again and got them moving in the right way under the leadership of Moses and Joshua. They came out of the desert and went on in the journey to the Promised Land.

We do not need to go into details of how the Israelites moved. The orders of the host are given here in chapters two and following of Numbers. They were to camp in certain areas, certain ways; of course, they were to camp with the tent, the sacred tabernacle, in the middle with the priests and Levites around it. On the four sides of the compass, there would be on each side three tribes defending the tabernacle. As they traveled the [unrolled and column], there would be six tribes going ahead of the tabernacle, the tabernacle with the priests in the middle, and six tribes bringing up the rear. The details are given here as the order of the host.

The details are of interest. Of course, how this tabernacle was taken down and put up is an interesting thing. It was a very clever structure. Its outlines were given by God, but the construction was executed by clever men; men upon whom the spirit of the Lord came. Bezalel is mentioned by name in the book of Exodus remember, and I already said that it was constructed on a pattern that was known to those who knew the architecture of Egypt. The sacred furniture was covered. Indeed, the ark of the tabernacle, the ark with the cherubim mercy seat over it, the place of atonement, was covered so that no man saw it when the tent was being taken down and put up. The priest would go in and take down the dividing curtain between the holy place and the most holy place and just drop that curtain down over the ark and tuck it around. The carrying sticks, the staves, came out and the ark shrouded this way, and the holy veil was carried by hand by the priests.

The ark was ready for travel and the tabernacle probably was put up and taken down in very record time by the priests and the Levites. Some of the items were carried on donkey back. There were also some wagons for the rather heavy extensive curtains, and the sacred furniture was carried by hand. The instructions were given that the Lord would tell them when to leave and the Lord would tell them when to stay. The Lord was with them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. When that pillar began to move, whether by day or night, the Israelites were to pick up and follow. The Lord was their leader.

The order of the host is given, and other details are given which we cannot stay with. In chapter 7, we have a curious chapter in the book of Numbers. This was a time when they were still at Sinai and there was a call for the different heads of the twelve tribes each to bring an offering. And in a recitation that seems to us rather tiresome, this offering is repeated exactly twelve times. Each of the tribes, the head of each of the twelve tribes, brings an offering for the use of the tabernacle and one tribe was not above another. The same gifts were given and the same sacrifices were given for all of the tribes were on a par before the Lord.

Other items of the tabernacle furniture are mentioned. Then in chapter 10, the Lord told Moses to make two trumpets of silver and these were the trumpets for announcing the new moons and the holy festivals and particularly the new year. These trumpets were used all the way during the history of Israel, perhaps new ones had to be made when they were taken in time of war, but these two trumpets are still to be seen in the arch of Titus in Rome as some of the spoils taken from the temple of Jerusalem where Titus took the silver trumpets and the gold tabernacle candlestick and the gold table of showbread as part of the spoils of war.

In chapter 10, on the twentieth day of the second month, it says in verse 11, the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle, the testimony, and the children of Israel took their journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai and by stages they went as far as Kadesh Barnea. They had problems.

The children of Israel complained. They cried unto Moses and the fire of the Lord burned among them. There were some that had come along from Egypt, impressed but not saved. A mixed multitude it says in 11:4. They wept and they said we need some food, who will give us flesh to eat? The Lord gave them manna. The laws of the manna are given there. Moses said at that time that he was just totally out of patience, and the Lord told Moses that He would give Him helpers. Seventy men of the elders of Israel; the Lord put His spirit upon them to help Moses in the leadership of the nation. As they went further, the people murmured again for meat, and the Lord brought them quails. Miraculously, he brought these quails, but they did not just appear from nowhere; quails do migrate in the near east and there have been very interesting stories of these great migrations, but these quails were brought by the Lord and they settled around about the camp and the Lord said that they would have quails for a month, which they did. But they also, as it says in the Psalms, the Lord gave them the quails, but He sent leanness into their souls.

Finally, they came to Kadesh Barnea. There Moses was objected to by Miriam and Aaron who spoke against him because he had married a Kushite woman. Kush here means Ethiopian, whether it was their color, her color, that they objected to, probably not because they did not seem to draw colored lines, but at least he had married this Ethiopian woman and they objected. The Lord judged Miriam heavily that time. She became leprous, white as snow, to teach her that the Lord chooses those whom he chooses and it was her business to obey. Moses cried and the Lord healed her in answer to his prayer.

They came to the borders of the land of Canaan, the southern border of Kadesh Barnea, and they sent men up then to spy out the land. One man from each tribe, and they went through the land of Canaan and brought back their report. Their report was a very interesting one. Two of the men, we know their names, Caleb and Joshua. Isn’t it interesting that the two faithful spies we know, but the ten faithless spies we do not even know their names anymore? Their names are given, but they are of no significance. The children of Israel sinned against the Lord here at Kadesh Barnea and did not enter the land of Canaan at that time.