Book of Numbers

God is not a man, that he should lie, neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

— Numbers 23:19

Overview

Numbers is the fourth book of the Torah, or Pentateuch. Its Hebrew title, Bemidbar (“in the wilderness”), is taken from the fifth word of its opening verse; the Greek and Latin translators instead named it after the two censuses of the Israelite fighting men that open and close its main narrative, in chapters 1 and 26.¹ The book records Israel’s journeyings from Sinai to the plains of Moab, on the border of the promised land, over a period of roughly thirty-eight years, combining historical narrative with legislation and cultic instruction added along the way.¹

Author and Date

Numbers belongs to the Pentateuch, whose Mosaic authorship the New Testament writers everywhere assume, quoting its books under the formula “Moses wrote” or “Moses said.”² Internally, Numbers narrates events reaching to the fortieth year after the exodus (Num. 33:38), placing its composition, on the traditional view, near the close of Moses’s life on the plains of Moab.

Historical and Literary Context

Numbers addresses the generation of Israelites who left Egypt in the exodus and, after their rebellion at Kadesh, the new generation born in the wilderness who would enter Canaan in their place. Elijah Porter Barrows identifies three epochs in the book’s history: the departure from Sinai and the journey to the wilderness of Paran (Num. 1-12); the rebellion of the people on the report of the twelve spies, for which the entire generation twenty years old and upward was doomed to perish in the wilderness (Num. 13-14); and the second arrival of Israel at Kadesh decades later, crowded with events including the death of Miriam, the exclusion of Moses and Aaron from the land, Aaron’s death at Mount Hor, the conquest of Sihon and Og, the oracles of Balaam, and a second numbering of the people on the plains of Moab (Num. 20-36).¹ Barrows describes the middle years of this history, between the rebellion and the second arrival at Kadesh, as passed over “in silence,” since the condemned generation “could fulfil its part in the plan of God only by dying for its sins with an unrecorded history.”¹

Structure

Numbers is organized around its two censuses of Israel’s fighting men, which divide the book into the story of the generation that left Egypt and the generation that would enter Canaan in its place:

The first generation (Num. 1-25): the census and organization of the tribes at Sinai (1-10), the journey toward Canaan (11-12), the rebellion at Kadesh and its sentence of forty years’ wandering (13-19), and the final approach of the condemned generation to the plains of Moab, including Balaam’s oracles (20-25).
The second generation (Num. 26-36): the second census (26), further legislation, the apportionment of the land east of the Jordan, and preparations to enter Canaan under Joshua.

The book’s own unity is chronological rather than topical, with narrative and legislation alternating as new circumstances required new ordinances.¹

Major Themes

Wilderness Wandering and Unbelief

The condemning act of the book is Israel’s refusal, at Kadesh, to trust God’s promise of the land after the report of the twelve spies, for which the whole generation that came out of Egypt was doomed to perish in the wilderness (Num. 14:26-35).¹ Oren Martin traces how this pattern of unbelief recurs through the book: “the theme of failure continues as the people repeatedly break covenant with Yahweh.”³ The author of Hebrews later holds up this same generation as a warning against unbelief, urging his readers not to harden their hearts “as in the rebellion” so that they do not, like that generation, fail to enter God’s rest (Heb. 3:7-19).

God’s Faithfulness Despite Israel’s Rebellion

Against Israel’s repeated unbelief, Numbers presents a God who keeps his word. Balaam, hired to curse Israel, instead pronounces that “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Num. 23:19), and the generation condemned at Kadesh is nonetheless preserved, provided for, and finally brought to the edge of the land God had sworn to give (Num. 26-27). The second census and the fresh legislation for entering the land mark the transition from judgment to renewed promise, the pivot on which “the promise theme” Martin traces from Genesis to Deuteronomy turns.⁴

The Priestly and Levitical Order

Much of Numbers is occupied with organizing the priesthood and the Levites for their service around the tabernacle: the Levites are numbered from a month old, set apart to God in place of Israel’s firstborn, and enter their formal duties at twenty-five, continuing until they are discharged from the more burdensome tabernacle service at fifty (Num. 3-4, 8).⁵ This priestly and sacrificial system, established at Sinai and organized for service in Numbers, was “symbolical and typical”: what the Aaronic priests were symbolically, Christ was really, the shadow of which he is the substance.⁶

Related Doctrines

References

Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 237-238. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Barrows, 206. ↩
Oren Rhea Martin, “The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan: Part 1, The Old Testament,” in “Bound for the Kingdom: The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2013), 168. ↩
Martin, 156-157. ↩
Benedict Pictet, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 230-231. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter VI. Priestly Office,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 465. ↩