Numbers of Numbers

I began a study in the Old Testament book of Numbers this week and did something I don’t ordinarily do. I opened a commentary from a good Commentary series and began to work through some of the author’s ideas about the book. Everything seemed to be going along rather well for the first verse and I was hopeful that the work would be helpful.

Bam! Verse 2 and the author goes off into a long explanation of the inflated numbers (from his perspective and that of most credible scholars) in the census of chapter one. I started laughing out loud at the inability of scholars to read and understand what is being said. Somehow, the author (and his scholarly forebears) got hung up on the notion of the census as being primarily to enumerate the men who would be available to serve in a military capacity; signing them up for the draft, if you will. However, the best clues as to what is happening here begin with the instructions in verse 1.

Clue 1 = Moses and Aaron are given the task of numbering those eligible for the army.  This number is not revealed. The total numbers that are being counted (and recorded) relate to the households (Hebrew = toledah, a technical term that points to the first ancestor in a group. Numbers 1:20…KJV is “generations”) and is extensive. It extends all the way back to the 12 patriarchs.

Clue 2 = God instructs Moses to enlist particular men, called out by name (1:5-15), to stand for the poll (KJV…those of you using other translations may have difficulty here since most of those versions are inaccurate at this point). “Poll” is a good old word that means “skull.” The Hebrew here (1:18) is familiar to those who know their New Testament rendering of the crucifixion = gulgoletham…Greek transliteration = Golgotha, the place of the skull (John 19:17…by the way. You Calvinists who inaccurately think that you were enumerated in some magical Manicheean/Zoroastrian “spark of divinity” pre-existence before God made the stuff of creation need to understand that you must show up at the “place of the skull” to be numbered with Jesus. Come to the cross!). Why count skulls? Literally. The numbers of the census are predicated on the records (“…the books were opened…” Revelation 20:12) brought from Egypt along with the firstborn males that are standing before the Lord when the leaders of the tribes begin the count.

Clue 3 = The story continues to discuss the unique case of the daughters of Zelophelad (Numbers 27:11) who demanded an inheritance in the land. This part of the story stands in direct tension with the sidebar mention of Er and Onan (26:19) who died in Canaan…thus no inheritance allotment of land is ascribed to them. It is easy to see that the point of the census is primarily to establish the boundaries of the lands and the amount given to the families: the census is frozen at this juncture strictly in relation to the tribal allotments. You cannot go into the past and count anyone beyond the 12 and there will be no future adjustments in the allotments; no encroaching on the weaker clans.

Clue 4 = The scholarly difficulty in any story such as this comes when they forget that the rest of the story is already a known commodity. At the point of takeoff in Numbers 1, the people standing in front of Moses and Moses himself have no idea that they are about to fail a crucial test and follow the stupidity of democratic influence (10 spies vs. 2) instead of the direction of faith in the Lord. They are not aware of the report of the spies and their own foolishness that will result in 40 years of wandering and all the males over 20 years that have just been counted becoming gulgoletham on the last day of the 40 years. The numbering establishes what households receive property and, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb (26:65), who will be dead in 40 years…NOT who will serve in God’s army to invade the land.