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

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Once again I have discovered that recording reading the passage really increases what I see in the passage.  The first thing that I never noticed is that, considering the numbers involved, the laying on of hands described in this passage for setting aside the Levites as special to the Lord in place of the firstborn is more complicated than we might imagine.  First, all of the Israelites were to assemble before the tent of meeting and lay their hands on the Levites.  If we assume that the assembly was only the men counted in the census at the beginning of the Book of Numbers, that would be over 600,000 men who needed to lay their hands on somewhere between 8,580 Levites (the number of Levite men between the ages of 30 and 50) and 22,000 Levites (the number of Levite males a month old and up).  Whatever the exact numbers having that many people lay hands on the Levites would have been complicated.  Then, once that part was done, the Levites gathered needed to lay their hands on the heads of the bulls about to be sacrificed.  Once again, something which would have been complicated to accomplish.  However this was executed, it required dedication on the part of all involved.  I see this whole effort to set aside the Levites from the rest of the people of Israel as special to God foreshadows the way in which Jesus was set aside from the rest of mankind as special to God, something which is symbolized by Jesus with His twelve apostles.

I also find it interesting that God told Moses that the Levites shall do service of the tent of meeting (the tabernacle) from the age of 25 to the age of 50.  Yet when God had Moses count the Levites available for service a short time earlier, He had Moses count the Levites from the age of 30 to 50.  I am not sure of the reason for this difference, but I would propose that perhaps those between the ages of 25 and 30 were in a kind of apprenticeship program, learning to be responsible.  Finally, I want to touch on the “retirement” age of the Levites.  At the age of 50 they were to withdraw from the service.  From that time on, they were to keep guard over the tabernacle and the Levites doing the work, but not do any of the work.  I am not sure how we should interpret this for work in the Church today, or even if we should seek to apply it, but I do think there are lessons for us in this.  I just don’t know what they are.

There is a lot more in this passage worth thinking about.  It talks about those who were unable to partake in the Passover at its appointed time and their desire to do so.  It talks about the cloud of the Lord’s presence and the way it guided the people of Israel.  It talks about the trumpets which were used to signal the people of Israel.  It talks about Moses convincing his in-laws to accompany the people of Israel.  I was not going to write about any of that, but I want to comment on Hobab’s relationship to Moses.  Here it tells us that Hobab was the son of Reuel.  It can also be read to say that Hobab was Moses’ father-in-law.  However, at other places it tells us that Reuel was Moses’ father-in-law.  The way the ESV translates this allows one to interpret this as saying either the Hobab was Moses’ father-in-law, or that he was the son of Moses’ father-in-law (the English sentence in the ESV can mean either).  From what I have seen over the years, this is consistent with the Hebrew.  The Ancient Hebrew word translated father-in-law is only different from the Ancient Hebrew word for brother-in-law by the vowels and Ancient Hebrew writing had no way to denote vowels.  So, the Hebrew of this passage would have been ambiguous as to whether Hobab was Moses’ father-in-law or his brother-in-law.

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.

I have been writing a bit about how Israel was divided into “twelve and one” for the last little bit.  Today’s passage follows the account of how the twelve tribes (counting Joseph’s two sons and not counting the Levites) all gave identical offerings for the dedication of the tabernacle.  It begins with the Levites being given onto God as a wave offering by the rest of Israel.  Once again foreshadowing Jesus being offered for all of humanity.  Another interesting thing in this passage is what happened when the Israelites celebrated the second Passover.  Some of the Israelites could not celebrate the Passover because they were ceremonially unclean as a result of handling a dead body, but did not want to miss out on celebrating the Passover.  They came to Moses to ask what they should do.  The answer which God gave to Moses was that those who for some reason could not celebrate the Passover on its normally scheduled date should do so the following month.  In giving that answer, God reiterated the importance of Israelites celebrating the Passover and included instructions that the same laws should apply to foreigners living among the Israelites: the same laws should  apply to both the foreigner and the native-born.

Towards the end of the passage it refers to “Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law.”  Which led me to explore the complications about the fact that the Bible uses two or three different names for Moses’ father-in-law.  It first refers to him as Reuel when Moses first meets him in Exodus 2.  Then later, when Moses encountered the burning bush in Exodus 3, it says that the name of Moses’ father-in-law was Jethro.  Finally in Judges 4:11, it says that Moses’ father-in-law was named Hobab (we usually miss this because most translators follow the explanation I found for this and translate it as “brother-in-law”).  Since I touch on this with my parenthetical explanation, I will address Hobab first.  The phrasing in this passage and the phrasing in judges is slightly ambiguous due to the nature of Hebrew.  First, even in English we could read this passage as saying that Reuel is the grandfather of Moses’ wife, but the translator chose to put a comma in to suggest that Hobab is Moses’ brother-in-law rather than his father-in-law.  Second, the Hebrew word for “father-in-law” and the Hebrew word for “brother-in-law” are written using exactly the same letters (Hebrew does not have letters for vowel sounds), with the difference in pronunciation being noted with marks similar to how English does punctuation and my understanding is that even that is an “innovation” introduced into Hebrew long after both Exodus, Numbers, and Judges were originally written.  Which brings us to Reuel and Jethro.  Well, like most, if not all, names in the Hebrew language, these both have descriptive meaning.  Reuel means either “friend of God” or “shepherd of God”, while Jethro means “excellent”.  Either, or both, of these could have been titles, or maybe even names given by others (similar to nicknames, but with more formality than what we mean by calling something a nickname), for Moses’ father-in-law.  For that matter, his name might have been Hobab, but he started going by these other designations when he gave his son the same name as himself.

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.

After the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests, God had Moses consecrate the Levites into service to God in place of the firstborn males of the rest of Israel (thus cementing their status as intermediaries between the rest of Israel and God).  Once that was done, it was time to celebrate the Passover.  So, the Israelites did so.  However, some of the Israelites were unable to celebrate the Passover because they were ceremonially unclean.  However, they wanted to celebrate Passover and asked Moses what they should do.  We can learn an important lesson from their enthusiasm for worshiping God and celebrating what He had done for them.  Finally, after those who were unable to celebrate the Sabbath at Mount Sinai at its appointed time were able to celebrate it according to the instructions God gave for such circumstances, the Israelites set out from Mount Sinai.

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 8-10.

I never thought about it before, but today I was struck by the mention that the gold lampstand in the Tabernacle was made of hammered gold.  Why say “hammered gold” and not just “gold”?  Later in today’s passage it describes the trumpets as being made out of hammered silver.   The writer clearly thinks it was important that his audience know that not only were these things made out of gold and silver, but that they were hammered into shape, not cast.  When I started writing this, I was not planning on saying any more about it than that.  However, as I wrote the above I started trying to determine what the significance could possibly be.  So, I did a little Internet research and discovered that hammered precious metals  are generally stronger and more durable (I am oversimplifying a little bit by phrasing it that way) than when the same metals are cast into shape.  So, the writer was telling his readers that these items were made as durable as possible for the tasks for which they were created.  So, what does that mean for us?  So, just as the lampstand and the trumpets were hammered to make them stronger in their service to God, we too will be hammered from time to time to make us stronger in our service to God.

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

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.

In the dedication of the Levites described here I continue to see foreshadowing of Jesus.  God set Jesus apart as His similar to the way He had the Israelites set the Levites apart as His.  The Levites were presented to God as a wave offering, whereas Jesus was treated as an offering fully dedicated to God.  Yet, with the Resurrection God returned Jesus to us as if He had been a wave offering.

I have written on this in previous years, but I find the actions of those who realized that they could not celebrate the Passover along with the rest of Israel instructive.  They did not just say to themselves, “Oh well, we can’t celebrate Passover because we had to handle a dead body.”  No, they went to Moses and asked what they could do.  They desperately wished to take part in this celebration of God’s power and of unity with their fellows.  God replied through Moses that not celebrating the Passover was not an option.  Instead, those who, for one reason or another, were legitimately unable to celebrate the Passover at the appointed time were to do so one month later.  In addition, God used this opportunity to remind the people of Israel, and us, that the same rules and regulations should apply to everyone.  The only exception we find to this is one that runs counter to what we as humans so often do: the rulers and leaders sometimes have stricter, more exacting, rules to follow than the common man, not special exemptions to the rules which apply to everyone else.

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. 

I don’t want to spend much time on this, but with the dedication of the Levites to God we have more of a sort of foreshadowing of the relationship between Jesus and His twelve apostles.  I know that I have not done a good job of explaining the meaning of that connection, but I hope my comments on it have provided food for thought for my readers about it.

Having said that I want to look at the the discussion here of the Second Passover.  In a way, we have two apparently contradictory things.  First, we have a group of people who are upset that they will miss out on celebrating the Passover.  But then we have Moses  giving a command to cut off from the entire people anyone who is ceremonially able to celebrate the Passover at its proscribed time who does not do so.  This tells us a lot about people.  There are aspects of worshiping God which we should be eager to take part in, that if we are right with God we will be eager to take part in.  Nevertheless, there will be people who choose to forgo those celebrations.

When I first read this passage, I wanted to write something about the fiery cloud which settled over the Tabernacle when the Israelites were camped, which rose and moved to direct them where to go next.  Considering the difficulty I have discerning God’s guidance for my life, this seems like a wonderful thing.  Yet, despite this visual evidence of God’s guidance, many of the Israelites still questioned Moses’ leadership.  Which makes me wonder if perhaps my inability to discern God’s guidance is not a lack of clarity, and obviousness, in the message He sends to guide me but rather in my resistance to doing what He wants me to do.  I will continue to pray that He open my eyes to the path He wishes me to follow.