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 16-18.

    Sometime shortly after the defeat the Israelites suffered when they tried to enter the Promised Land after initially refusing to do so, several prominent men formed a group to replace Moses. This appears to have been a response to Moses’ decision (as directed by God) to lead the people back into the wilderness. The story of this rebellion has always troubled me because the rebels basic argument is one which resonates with me; shouldn’t the leader be answerable to the people? I do believe that the leaders of the Church should be accountable to the members. On the other hand, we need to carefully seek God’s guidance before we seek to remove those whom He has placed in a leadership position.

    That brings us to the reason this group thought that Moses should be replaced. They felt that he had failed to fulfill his promises to the people. Leaving aside the failure of the people to do their part, this is a good starting point for replacing a leader. However, it is an insufficient basis for putting oneself forward as the replacement. These rebels failed to lay out their own alternative course of action to the one chosen by Moses. Further some of the leaders of the rebellion refused to come before God and the people to make their case for leadership change. Which brings us to how Moses dealt with this challenge to his leadership. He laid the matter before God for God to make His will clear about who should lead the people.

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 11-13.

    Shortly after leaving Mt Sinai the people of Israel began lamenting the fact that they no longer had access to all of the good food which was available in Egypt. As I was reading today I realized that this event occurred as the result of a build up of unresolved complaints, most, if not all, of which were extremely minor, even to the people making them. Despite having set up people to judge in “legal” disputes among the people, Moses was still the go-to guy for spiritual counseling. That is not quite the right way to express that, because it makes it seem like something the priests could address, but it was not the sort of things you would go to a priest about. The people knew that these issues were too small to bring to Moses, but it left them with ever increasing frustration that finally blew up. As a result, God told Moses to select 70 men upon whom God would pour out His Spirit so that they could take some of this burden off of him.

    In addition to telling Moses to select 70 men, God told him that He would send them meat to provide variety to their diet, so much that they would become sick from it. When looked at the way I laid out in the previous paragraph, God’s response seems harsh. However, the frustrations the people of Israel were feeling were their own fault. They had failed to seek out someone to help them deal with their complaints, complaints which they knew were minor. There are really two sides to this. If we are the leaders of a group of people, we need to put into place systems to allow people to vent their discontent and frustration, systems which make them feel like their concerns have been heard and will be addressed (an important part of making people feel like their concerns will be addressed is for their concerns to actually be addressed). On the other hand, if we are members of a group (and we all are), we need to find people to whom we can present our discontent and frustration, people who can see that they get addressed.

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 8-10.

    Following the dedication of Aaron and his sons as priests and the dedication of the Tabernacle, the Children of Israel dedicated all of the males of the tribe of Levi to the service of God (or possibly concurrently). This dedication strengthens the “twelve plus one” nature of the nation of Israel which foreshadows Jesus and His Twelve Disciples. In a manner similar to the way that the Levites were dedicated to God in place of the first born sons of the Children of Israel, Jesus was dedicated to God in place of all of us. There are severe limits to this comparison, but I am convinced that Jesus knowingly chose Twelve Disciples to make this connection.

    The account about those who were unable to celebrate the second Passover has lessons for us. There was a group of men who came to Moses because they were ceremonially unclean from touching a dead body and thus could not celebrate the Passover. They were not looking for a loophole to get out of doing so. Rather they were upset that they could not. So, they were eager to take part in the ritual of Passover. We should be similarly eager to take part in activities of worship. God gave Moses instructions that those who could not take part in the Passover, because they had touched a dead body (such as when someone had died and needed to be buried) or because they were traveling, should celebrate the Passover a month later. However, this only applied to those who had a reason why they could not take part at the normal time. It being inconvenient was not such a reason.

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 5-6.

    There are two interesting rituals in today’s passage. The first discusses what a husband should do if he thinks his wife is unfaithful, but has no proof. This ritual bothers me because it places a burden on a wife to prove her faithfulness to a jealous husband but no similar burden is placed upon a husband of a jealous wife. However, that is a result of a culture that was very different from ours today. While I am about to make a partial defense of this ritual that does not mean that I think we should practice it today. This ritual eliminates a husband being able to excuse his abuse of his wife on the basis of claiming it was because she cheated on him. If he thinks his wife has cheated on him this passage gives him the only course of action open to him; take his wife to the priest and make an offering for God to pass judgment. The other aspect of this is that I firmly believe that God has the power and will to make it so that a woman who was guilty of no sin would suffer no consequence from undergoing this ritual.

    The second interesting ritual in today’s passage is the vow of a Nazirite. The passage does not make it clear why someone would take a vow of a Nazirite. Part of the reason would be to declare oneself dedicated to service to God. However, every time I read this passage it seems to me that there is more to such a vow than that. It seems to me that one would take a vow of a Nazirite as a way to emphasize the seriousness to which one held some ministry or activity that one was going to do in service to the Lord. As an example of what I mean by this: one might take a vow to read through the Bible in a certain amount of time (say a year). To add a bit more dedication and focus to that vow, one might make it as a vow of a Nazirite and follow the rules laid out in this passage. The vow of a Nazirite contains a private and a public element. On the private side, one would avoid wine and all of the products of the grape vine. The discipline of doing this would help the individual to focus on God. On the private side, one would not cut one’s hair for the duration of the vow. This would signal to those around them that they were dedicating themselves to serving God.

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 3-4.

    Yesterday, I suggested two reasons why the Levites were not included in the census of those available to go to war for the Israelite nation. The first was that if they went to war they would be ceremonially unclean for handling the Tabernacle. The second was that they were reserved for the defense of the Tabernacle and its fittings. Today’s passage seems to confirm that my guess that it was the first rather than the second. The reason I reach that conclusion is that today’s passage contains a census of the males of the tribe of Levi. Unlike the census of those able to go to war, this census was of all males one month and older. These were dedicated to the Lord in place of the first born sons of the rest of the people of Israel.

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 1-2.

    One year after leaving Egypt, Moses conducted a census of those considered able to go to war. I have read this passage many times, but have never thought about the fact that the age when someone was considered ready to go to war. They only counted men who were twenty years or older. Which basically tells us that they considered 20 years old to be the onset of adulthood. In order to conduct this census, Moses received the assistance of the leader of each of the tribes. The passage seems to imply that this census was conducted in a single day, although I am not sure if that is intentional. As a result of this census we learn that, one year after leaving Egypt, the fighting force of the Children of Israel was over 600,000 men. This count did not include the descendants of Levi. There are two possible readings of why the Levites were left out of the census. The first is that they were not part of the army of the Children of Israel because it was their duty to care for the Tabernacle and taking part in war would make them ritually unclean. The second is that they were not part of the army of the Children of Israel because their duty during battle was to defend the Tabernacle and its furnishings. I suspect that it was the former, but reading this today makes me wonder.