February 15, 2018 Bible Study — The Levites and the Twelve Tribes

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 7.

    After Moses set up the Tabernacle and anointed it, the leaders of the tribes other than the Levites made offerings for transporting the Tabernacle and its furnishings and to dedicate the Tabernacle. It is not clear from the passage if this happened before, during, or after the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests. One thing I noticed this year reading through the Bible which comes out especially in this passage is that the Levites were not counted among the Twelve Tribes (most of the time). That instead Ephraim and Manasseh were each counted as one of the tribes. What I find interesting about this is that it matches up with Jesus and His Twelve Disciples. The other thing of note is that the leaders of each of the Twelve Tribes gave exactly the same offering, even though we know from the census counts a few chapters earlier that the tribes varied in size by a significant amount.