Day 44 Numbers 7

            This section is only one chapter because it’s almost 90 verses long.  Fortunately there’s only about half a dozen verses worth of content so, hey, easy post.

            The Israelites set up camp and Moses started accepting offerings from the leaders of the 12 tribes on behalf of the Lord.  Each leader donated an ox and they all got together in pairs and went halvsies on six carts as well.  Moses distributed the oxen to the Gershonites and the Merarites to haul tabernacle stuff, but he gave none to the Kohathites because they carried the holiest things and they had to do it by hand.

            Each tribal leader brought an offering in turn.  Each one brought exactly:

One silver plate weighing a hundred and thirty shekels and one silver sprinkling bowl weighing seventy shekels, both according to the sanctuary shekel, each filled with the finest flour mixed with olive oil as a grain offering; ¹⁴ one gold dish weighing ten shekels, filled with incense; ¹⁵ one young bull, one ram and one male lamb a year old for a burnt offering; ¹⁶ one male goat for a sin offering; ¹⁷ and two oxen, five rams, five male goats and five male lambs a year old to be sacrificed as a fellowship offering.

            Every leader brought the same thing.  It doesn’t say that this was predetermined by the Lord or by Moses so I’m not sure how it got so organized.  I mean it’s not a simple matter to get twelve bowls that all weigh the same using the tools one can come up with in a bronze-age desert wilderness.  It sounds to me like some kind of sacrificial price-fixing scheme to prevent any one tribe from having the best or worst offering.  That’s actually a pretty good idea.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the tribe that only brought a 70 shekel plate when the tribe next door managed to bring in a 200 shekel plate.

            When Moses finishes dedicating all these offerings he heard the voice of God coming from between the angels on top of the ark of the covenant.  God said to Moses…

            Cliffhanger!  Is God pleased with the offerings?  Is He furious at this dirty communist offering scheme?  Is He going to talk about something completely unrelated to anything that’s happened so far?  Tune in tomorrow morning to find out.  Or read chapter 8 of Numbers I guess, it’s not hard to get a hold of.

            I mean you’re already on the internet after all.