Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 11-13.

The first thing I thought about when I read today’s passage is that skeptical historians hold that the Exodus could not have happened as described by the Bible because the Sinai Peninsula could not have supported a group of people as large as the one recorded here and elsewhere in the Bible.  That position relies on the belief that miracles do not happen.  This passage makes it clear that God miraculously provided for the Children of Israel while they were in the wilderness.  However, I want to focus on Moses appointing seventy elders at God’s command.  Previously, Moses’ father-in-law had told him that he needed to delegate some of the task of managing the Israelites to others.  Nevertheless, when we get to this passage, Moses is still taking the full burden on himself, which leads him to beg God to give him help, or to take his life.  In response, God told Moses to bring together seventy elders and leaders of the people and God would pour out His Spirit upon them.  Two of the seventy whom Moses appointed did not come to the meeting of the elders which Moses called.  Nevertheless, God poured His Spirit out on those two when He poured it out on the other sixty-eight.  All seventy began prophesying when God’s Spirit came upon them.  Joshua wanted Moses to stop the two who had not joined the others at the tent of meeting, but Moses refused.  Moses replied that he wished God would pour out His Spirit on all of His people.  We should wish the same today.  Or more precisely, we should wish that off of God’s people accept His Spirit being poured out upon them and into them.  Further than that, I wish that all of the people I know, and even the people I do not know, would accept God’s Spirit.

I want to add a note that I believe there is a connection between Moses choosing seventy elders and Jesus sending out seventy disciples (some manuscripts say seventy-two, but the parallel to here makes me think it was seventy).

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 8-10.

A few days ago, I wrote about the fact that when Moses counted the Levites to determine who was available to work in the care and maintenance of the tabernacle he only counted the men between the ages of thirty and fifty.  In today’s passage. Moses, in accordance with God’s command, purified and set aside the Levites for service to God, particularly in the care and maintenance of the tabernacle.  However, when God gave Moses instruction on who should do the work of the tabernacle, He specified that men of the tribe of Levi should begin doing the work in the tabernacle at the age of twenty-five and retire from actively doing the work at fifty.  Then God told Moses that Levites over the age of fifty could continue to assist their brothers in performing their duties, but they should no longer do the work.  I am not quite sure what is meant by that, but I think it means offering advice on the best way to carry out the duties, helping to resolve conflicts in the course of carrying the work, and training the younger men who were just starting out.  I believe this passage reinforces what I wrote about the Levite census.  It adds two things for our consideration.  Young men should be encouraged to become active in doing the work of the Church when they reach twenty-five years of age, and older men should step back and encourage younger men to take over leadership roles.  Older men should seek to provide advice and training to younger men as those younger men seek to do God’s work.  Again, this does not mean that older men should not do God’s work if no one younger is available, but they should seek out and encourage younger men to do the work…and under no circumstances whatsoever should they allow themselves to be perceived as standing in the way of younger men doing the work.

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

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.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 1-2.

The Book of Numbers begins with the account of the census which Moses took of the Israelites.  The census was a count of the men 20 years old and older, except for the Levites who were excluded from this census.  Interestingly, this passage is one of those places where the Israelites are divided into thirteen groups, twelve plus one.  The tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim are counted along with the other ten tribes, and the tribe of Levi is set aside as separate and different.  A few years ago I was struck by how this “twelve plus one” division of the tribes reflects the twelve plus one nature of Jesus ministry on earth where He traveled around with His twelve Apostles.  I have never reached a conclusion about the meaning of that comparison, just noted it for future reference.

The previous paragraph was meant to be an aside before I got to my main point (which is not any more ground breaking).  I have had a perception about the relative sizes and significance of the tribes of Israel.  For example I always thought that the tribes of Judah and Ephraim were large and important and that the tribes of Dan and Benjamin were small, and not very important.  Yet, when a look at the census results I see that the tribe of Ephraim had only 40,500 men counted, only the tribes of Benjamin and Manasseh had fewer men in this census.  While the tribe of Dan had 62,700 men, second in size only to the tribe of Judah.  Not only that, but the twelve tribes were divided into four camps and one of the tribes was designated as the lead for that camp.  Dan was designated as lead for one of the four camps.  So, not only was the tribe of Dan much larger relative to the other tribes than I thought, it was one of the more important tribes.  None of this is particularly important, but it shows how we need to read the Bible carefully because some of the general impressions we have do not reflect what the Bible actually says.

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