February 13, 2023 Bible Study — Thinking About What The Censuses Of The Levites Tells Us

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 3-4.

After completing the census of all males twenty years old and older for the rest of the Israelites, Moses conducted two censuses of the tribe of Levi.  In the first of these censuses Moses counted every male a month old or more.  The result of this census was 22,000, making the tribe of Levi the smallest tribe by a wide margin.  This number worked out for the best because God chose the Levites as redemption for the first-born sons of the rest of Israel.   The first-born sons were God’s because He spared them when He killed all of the first-born sons in Egypt on the first Passover (there is significance in that worth talking about, but it is not what I feel led to write about today).   Upon completing the reconciliation of the number of male Levites with the number of first-born male of all of the Israelites, Moses conducted a second census of the Levites.  This second census was of all of the Levite males between the ages of thirty and fifty.  This second census of the Levites was to count those who would come to serve in the work of the tabernacle.  While I do not believe that we should think that the work of the Church should be done only by those in that age range, we should recognize that the bulk of the work of the Church probably will be done by those in that age range.  Or, perhaps I should say, something is wrong when that age range is not doing the bulk of the work of the Church.

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