Day 56 Numbers 35-36

            God commands the creation of cities for the Levites to live in.  There are to be forty eight towns all together and six of them will be towns of refuge.  If you kill someone accidently and are afraid of that person’s family taking revenge on you, you can move to a city of refuge and you’re safe from vengeance as long as you stay there.  Once the high priest dies, you’re safe forever and you can leave.  It’s important that this is only true if it’s an accidental death though.  This section differentiates very strongly between accidently killing someone and intentionally murdering them.  This is not the first time in Numbers that the idea of accidental versus intentional sin is discussed.  It seems like a bit of a theme in this book.  God did not hand down the sacrificial laws so that you could buy your way out of punishments; he created this system as a means of recovering from accidental rule-breaking so that God can still stand to be around you.

            God Himself told Moses that He couldn’t travel with the Israelites because they were too wicked, too disobedient for Him to be around, so I wonder how it is that God had such an amicable relationship with Abraham or his sons.  I mean, I know they didn’t have this same covenant so Abraham wasn’t actually breaking commandments back then, but God is saying that He can’t stand to be around someone who doesn’t wash their cloths right or who burns incense to Him the wrong way.  Did God’s preferences change in the intervening couple hundred years?  Is God’s disgust based on the Israelites’ disobedience, so like it’s only abhorrent to God, not because it’s something He doesn’t like per se, but just because He told them not to do it?  This book raises as many questions as it does answers sometimes.

            I mean the Bible, not the book of Numbers.  Numbers is actually pretty straightforward.

            Most of the time.

            The very last chapter outlines some logistical problems that have come up from those sisters from before inheriting their father’s land in chapter 27.  Some guys from the (half)tribe of Manasseh come to Moses and the heads of the Israelite families and point out that if those women, who were from their tribe, went off and married men from other tribes, then their husbands would absorb their holdings.  That means that land that was allocated for the tribe of Manasseh could be acquired by someone from Judah or Dan or whatever.  This transfer of land, under the law, would persist even through a year of Jubilee when all bought land is returned to the original owner.  That’s a real problem because the boundaries of the tribal lands are kind of holy, and this loophole could muddy those borders a lot over a few generations.  Moses and the elders patched it up with a ad hoc little piece of legislation decreeing that any women who inherit land in such a way have to marry within their own tribes.  Bang, done, next.

Day 55 Numbers 33-34

            The borders of Israel will be basically rectangular.  The east and west will be outlined by the Mediterranean and the Jordan river.  The southern border will be a line from the bottom of the dead sea straight across to Egypt.  The northern border will be a little higher than the Sea of Galilee and will run from Mt Hor, which was where Aaron died, through Libo Hamath to Zedad.  It’s difficult to pin down where any of these places are, but when I put Libo Hamath into Google Maps it takes me to the ruins of Tyre, which seems like about where that border might be.  Tyre is a really interesting city.  Carthage was a colony of Tyre, but before that, Tyre was a colony of Sidon.  That’s all after the time of the book of Numbers though.  I wonder if Zedad might have later become Sidon.   Of course I don’t have anything to base that one beyond the fact that they sound a little bit similar.  Maybe on my next pass through the Bible I’ll have time to research it more thoroughly.  Tune in next year.

            I’m a little surprised at how small the boundaries laid out by God really are.  I got the impression that Israel was supposed to take up the lion’s share of the Arabian Peninsula, but it sounds here like it’s only supposed to be about the same size and shape of the northern half of the current day nations of Israel, if you count all the U.N. contested Palestinian parts and the Golan Heights and all the stuff that Israel claims.  This puts Be’er Sheba and a lot of the places important to the history of Abraham and the early heroes of the Bible outside of the promised land.

Day 54 Numbers 31-32

            The Israelites take revenge on the Midianites for that stunt with Balaam and trying to curse them.  God tells them to go and kill all the Midianites, which they do, sort of.  The Israelite army gets back to camp with the spoils, but Moses and Eleazer are cross with them for only killing all the men and not the women, who were the cause of that plague before.  Moses tells them they can keep all the virginal girls, but they have to kill all the older women.  Also, anyone who kills somebody or has been near a dead body is ritualistically unclean and has to wait outside the camp for a week doing cleansing things.  This is also true for all the spoils which have to be passed through fire if they’re made out of metal and cleaned with cleansing water.

            This cleansing ritual of separating things from the population centers, passing through fire and washing with cleansing water is very cool.  The brewing of the cleansing water probably has a little more pageantry involved than is strictly necessary, but the basic concept is sound.  Ashes, specifically the rendered fat of animals, make a primitive soap.  The whole process actually sounds very effective.

            Balaam is killed in the battle.  That kind of makes me sad.  I find that I like these characters who talk to God but are not Israelites.  Balaam was obedient to God by and large, but he wasn’t an Israelite so I guess that trumps his faithfulness.  I suppose without access to the tabernacles though, he couldn’t possibly be completely right with God.  Everyone had sins to be cleansed.

            Surveying the land just east of the Jordan River before they crossed over, the Ruebenites and Gadites decided that they would prefer to set up their lands over here, just outside the land promised them by God.  Moses chews them out pretty good for that at first, because the last time people started talking about not going into the promised land God sent them back out into the desert for forty years.  The Rubenites and the Gadites tell Moses that they just like this land for grazing though and they will still come help conquer Canaan, but afterwards, they would like to please come back here.  Moses says that’s fine, but if they don’t keep their word and fight with the rest of them, then they’re all going to be killed.  Once it gets all trendy, the half-tribe of Menassah also decides to return to the eastern bank of the Jordan after their done in Canaan.

Day 53 Numbers 28-30

             The lord gives Moses some more specific instructions about what to sacrifice on the various festivals laid down on the Israelite calendar.  Each one is different, but the basic theme is that God really likes the smell of burning cow meat.

            Rules are also formalized for dealing with oaths and vows made by women.  Obviously men have to keep their words, but if a woman makes a vow, her father or husband has the opportunity to forbid it.  If the head of the woman’s household hears her vow and does nothing about it then it stands under the law, but if he hears it and forbids it, then it’s undone.  Never happened.

Day 52 Numbers 26-27

            God ordered another census taken.  There are still around 600,000 Israelites even with all the plagues and failed battle plans and various punishments.  God says that all the land they receive once they’re allowed into the promised land is to be divided up according to family sizes.

            They must be getting close to entering the promised land because that census isn’t the only preparation being made.  God tells Moses that he’s going to die before too long, (Moses, not God) and he and Aaron sinned back at that well a couple chapters ago, so he can’t enter the holy land with his people.  He can go up to a mountain top and see the land, but he must then come down and announce his successor.  His successor will be Joshua, one of the scouts who went into Canaan before and said that they could conquer it even though all the people were huge fighters and lived in fortified cities.  Caleb also said that, but I guess Joshua did it better, so he’s the new leader.

            While all this is happening, some sisters come to Moses saying their father has died and they have no brothers, but they feel like they should still get their father’s portion of the inheritance when they get to Canaan.  Moses goes to God about it and God tells him that any time that happens daughters can inherit.  If there were no daughters, the inheritance would go to the brothers.  If there are no brothers, then to uncles, and then basically the closest family member available after that.

Day 51 Numbers 23-25

            Balaam is brought to several hilltops around Jericho and the Jordan river where he could see the Israelite camp so that he could curse them.  Much to the chagrin of Balak and his people, Balaam kept blessing the Israelites every time he opened his mouth to prophecy.  He kept trying to explain that he doesn’t have any power to bless or curse anybody, but only repeat what God says.  After seven different ceremonies, Balaam has blessed Israel three times and systematically cursed every one of the other nations in the area, saying that Israel is going to destroy them.

            I think that at least some of these leaders he’s talking to must be descendants of Ishmael.  I’d like to see a chart or something that lays that out.

            While the Israelites are camped out near the Moabites, some of the men begin fraternizing with Moabite women.  I’m not sure if that’s allowed under the law or not, since the Moabite women aren’t under the dominion of any Israelite men, I’m not sure that there’s any rules against fornicating with them,

            The foreign women convince Israelite men to worship their Moabite Gods though, which infuriates God.  God sends an awful plague until Moses declares that every man who’s been consorting with the Moabites must be put to death.  While everyone’s praying about this around the entrance to the tent of meeting, someone who didn’t get the memo actually brings a Moabite woman into camp.  Eleazer sees them and grabs a spear.  He follows them all the way to the mans tent and then stabs the spear through the both of them.

            God makes a covenant with Eleazer to make his line a holy line of priests because his zeal was most comparable to the Lord’s zeal when it comes to enforcing the law.

Day 50 Numbers 21-22

            The book of Numbers has officially jumped the shark.  In the last section the kind of the Edomites told the Israelites that they could not pass through Edom.  After some arguing they finally just went around.  I just realized though, that the Israelites are supposed to be following God’s cloud of fire and light.  Did they turn away from God or did God decide not to pass through Edom?

            That’s kind of weird, but even stranger is the plague of snakes that God sends into the camp because people were complaining about how they should have stayed back in Egypt.  When Moses prays about it God tells him to hoist a big bronze snake up on a pole and whoever looks at it will be cured of the snakes’ poison.  That sounds a lot like an idol, but whatever.

            Where things really get weird is when the Israelites are parked near Jericho and Moab, leader of the Moabites, had seen the destruction they’d brought upon the Amorites so he summoned Balaam.  Balaam, it sounds like, is a guy who’s really good at cursing people.  He also talks to God.

            God told Balaam not to go at first, but then Moab sent some fancier priests and Balaam asked God again if he could go.  God told him he could go with them but he had to do only what God told him to.  On his way to Moab an angry, invisible, sword-wielding angel appeared three times in front of him and each time his donkey walked off the path or turned or did something to stop Balaam.  The third time he started beating and cursing the donkey, but then God spoke to him through the donkey and allowed him to see the angel ahead who would have killed him.

            Balaam apologizes and offers to return home.  God tells him to continue on, but only to say what He tells him to.  Moab seems a little impatient when they finally arrive, but Balaam shuts him down telling him that he’s here now, but he can only say what God allows him to.

Day 49 Numbers 18-20

            The Levites are responsible for the sins of the people and the priests are responsible for the sins of the Levites.  If a Levite wanders himself into someplace he shouldn’t be and accidently sees God or something then both he and a priest will die for it.

            If anyone is in need of some cleansing, Eleazer the priest has a recipe for some special water for cleansing.  He has to ritualistically burn a heifer to ashes outside of camp, which will make him unclean.  Another guy has to come and collect the ashes and then those are used to make special cleansing water.

            When the Israelites come to a place to camp where there’s no water, a group of them jump immediately to their go-to complaints.  “We should have stayed back in Egypt.”  “Why did you bring us out here to die?”  Moses and Aaron pray and God tells them to strike a rock with a staff and water will come out.  When Moses strikes the rock though, he kind of implies that he’s the one bringing forth the water from the ground.  It doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be disrespectful of God, but he’s very frustrated with the people and maybe spoke out of that frustration without really thinking.  God tells him that for failing to glorify Him in carrying out His miracle, God will not allow Moses to lead the people into the promised land.  It sounds like God’s getting a little frustrated these days too.  Moses is basically God’s favorite person to date.  The fact that such a seemingly small omission brought such incredible consequences really seems to demonstrate that God is not screwing around when it comes to receiving credit for what He has done.

Day 48 Numbers 16-17

            250 Israelites led by Korah, a Levite and a few Reubenites came to Moses saying that he had no right to act as though he were closer to God than any of the rest of them.  After all, God was with the entire assembly, not just Moses.  Long story short: the three main leaders were swallowed up by the Earth and all their followers were burned to death by God the same way that those two sons of Aaron’s were burned to death at the big party towards the end of Exodus.

            To try to develop a little more trust within the camp and hopefully prevent more killings in the near future, God told Moses to collect staves from each of the heads of the tribes, including Aaron’s staff representing the tribe of Levi.  He put them in the tabernacle overnight and the next morning Aaron’s staff had sprouted and started growing almonds.

            God said to put Aaron’s staff in front of the ark of their covenant as a reminder to people to have faith so He wouldn’t have to kill them all.  The people didn’t seem to take it that well though and started wailing and despairing in fear that God would kill anybody who came near the tabernacle.

Day 47 Numbers 14-15

            Once again, the Israelites bemoan their fate and say they would be better off back in Egypt.  Once again God hears them and resolves to kill every last one of them for their lack of faith and start the race over with Moses, and once again Moses talks Him down.  This time the people get so far as to start planning to stone Moses and Aaron and choose a new man to lead them back to Egypt.

            Moses says that if God kills all the Israelites, then the Egyptians and other nations will hear about it and say that it’s a sign of God’s weakness, that He couldn’t lead them to the promised land.

            God settles on only killing the men who came back giving a scary report of the new land, everyone who was sent out except for Caleb and Hoshea. Moses called Hoshea Joshua, by the way, which means God, salvation, possibly God is salvation or God’s salvation.  The name Joshua later evolved into the name Jesus.

            The Lord also said that the Israelites had rejected His gift of this land so they could no longer have it.  They were cursed to wander the desert for another forty years until the current generation was dead, then their children could come back and try this again.

            The people then decided that they would very much like to invade Caanan rather than camp in the desert for the rest of their lives so they ran out to try to conquer the first hill they came across.  Moses warned them not to go, and that God was not with them, so they were immediately routed by the Amalakites.

            God lays down some more offerings that must be paid when the Israelites eventually enter their land.  More importantly though, the sacrificial system is clarified so that there is a procedure for absolving accidental sins, but any intentional sins get you cut off from the people.  I guess some people must have started to figure out that they could go fornicate with each other’s wives as long as they made the right sacrifices afterward.  Now anyone who intentionally sins is banished, or worse.  Some guy is caught gathering firewood on the Sabbath and God commands Moses to have him stoned.

            God did warn Moses at the outset that if He traveled with them, their disobedience and wickedness would be unbearable to Him and He would likely destroy them all.

            There are many laws now, so everyone is supposed to wear tassels on their cloths to remind them of all the rules.  They should all have a blue cord running through them, which probably had some kind of cultural significance.  Some jews still wear this.

Day 46 Numbers 11-13

            Once again, the people start to grumble about their hardships.  This whole time they have been eating the mana that falls to the ground with the dew and they’re getting tired of it.  They tried preparing it a few different ways, but it’s getting really old and they remember all the good food they had in Egypt.  They talk about how they were better off back there, so God sets some of them on fire.

            Moses goes to talk to God and begs Him to let some of Moses’s responsibilities rest on some other people.  He feels like a nurse-maid carrying the whole camp while none of them understand anything about what’s going on with God.  The Lord tells him to bring 70 men from all the tribes and He will make them prophets as well.  Since is was the griping about the food that started all this, He will also stuff all the complainers so full of meat that they’ll wish they’d never asked for it to begin with.  These people need to stop saying that they were better off in Egypt.  That really seems to piss God off.

            God says that He’s sending meat because He has heard the wailing of the people.  A huge amount of quail showed up in piles several feet deep all around the camp.  The language seems to imply to me that the quail was already dead when the Israelites went out to gather it, which would make them violate the law about dealing with dead things, but it’s not completely clear.  That would make sense though because in the next scene we hear about a terrible plague wiping out all the people who complained so much about wanting meat.

            Aaron and his wife start questioning Moses’s leadership a little bit.  Now that there are some other prophets around Moses doesn’t seem quite as special.  I’ve been thinking lately that Aaron is really positioned to have a lot of problems with his pride here.  He’s the high-priest of the whole civilization, which is a huge deal since this is supposed to be a nation of priests.  Within the temple hierarchy he is the biggest thing around, yet what are his duties?  Lighting some candles, overseeing the way the tabernacle components are cleaned and transported.  He does a lot of sacrifices for people, but that’s probably actually pretty tedious once the novelty wears off to be honest.  He’s like the head janitor of the camp.  All he does take care of all the day to day operations and whatever else Moses tells him God says to do.

            Anyway, God calls a meeting with all three of them, chews out Aaron and gives his wife leprosy.  Aaron goes to Moses, who then goes to God on her behalf and she is cured seven days later, but in the interim she has to live outside of camp.

            These little administrative matters taken care of, the camp continues on to Canaan, the promised land.  When they start getting close, Moses sends some spies in from all the tribes to scout out the land and the people in it.  They report back that the land is awesome and full of great fruit and stuff, but also populated by giants and assorted badasses living in big fortified cities and who would love nothing more than to eat little Israelite armies for breakfast.

            One of the scouts though, Caleb, insists that it will be fine and they should attack at once.  Caleb is confident that they will be victorious, after all, God told them that land was for them to have, right?

Day 45 Numbers 8-10

            God told Moses to have Aaron set up lamps in the tabernacle.  The Levites were set apart for God in a big ceremony where they sacrificed and purified themselves and prayed.

            With all of the logistics sorted out now the people just followed God.  The big cloud would lift up from the tent of meeting and they would break camp and follow it until it stopped.  Then they would set up their tents and stay there until the cloud lifted again, sometimes for a single day, sometimes for a year.  Eventually though, they set out for the land that God promised them.  Moses’s father in law started back to his home, but Moses convinced him to stay with the camp and share his knowledge of the desert, promising that they would share the great things in Caanan with him.

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.

Day 43 Numbers 5-6

            Anyone with a skin disease or who has become unclean through contact with a dead body must be sent away from camp.

            There is a special magic spell given in Numbers chapter 5 for determining whether or not your wife has been faithful.  You have to take her to the priests with some special offerings and they mix a potion for her to drink.  If she’s been fooling around on you then the draught will make her swell and then miscarry, but if she’s been faithful then she will be able to have children still.

            Another way to show dedication to the Lord is to take a vow as a Nazarite.  For a certain amount of time that you determine at the outset you may not drink any fermented beverage or eat or drink anything that has ever had anything to do with grapes.  You may not cut your hair, because your hair during this time is symbolic of your vow and so it’s holy.  You absolutely may not have anything to do with a dead body.  For serious.  If your mother or father dies you may not have anything to do with the burial.  If you’re in a room with someone and they drop dead faster than you are able to run out of the building, then you have to go to the priests, shave your head, offer a bunch of sacrifices and then start your time over again because God has exactly zero tolerance for you being around a dead body.

            At the end of your time as a Nazarite you cut off your hair and offer a bunch of sacrifices.  Nothing really happens, but you get to show your devotion to God, so that’s nice.  There are no time requirements given so I guess you could vow to be a Nazarite for like a day, but it doesn’t really make much sense unless you do it for long enough to allow your hair to grow out noticeably, so that’s at least a month or two.

            I can’t find any information on what this word ‘Nazarite’ actually means.  I always though it had at least some tacit connection to the town of Nazareth, and I’m sure there are plenty of medieval bible ‘scholars’ who were happy to make that jump as well, but it doesn’t sound like there’s really anything out there to back it up.  All the etymology sources I can find keep directing me back to this same chapter, which only says what a Nazarite is, but not why they are so named.  Oh well, I’m open to hearing new information if anyone has any.

            The section ends with a new blessing for the priests to give to the people of Israel, and so that is also how I will end.

The LORD bless you
   and keep you;
²⁵ the LORD make his face shine on you
   and be gracious to you;
²⁶ the LORD turn his face toward you
   and give you peace.

Day 42 Numbers 3-4

            I thought it was odd back in Exodus when God said that every firstborn son was His.  It made sense since he sort of saved all the Israelite firstborn sons from that plague that He sent, but I don’t remember ever hearing anything about that from later in the Bible.  It turns out that’s because God changed that rule shortly after he made it.

            Well, He didn’t change it really, but He said that He would accept the entire tribe of Levi in liue of the firstborn sons from the rest of the camp.  Another part of the census taken involved counting all the men of the tribe of Levi as well as all the newborns from all the other tribes.  It turned out there was almost the same number of both of them.  The Israelites just paid the difference to the Levites for the extra couple hundred infants and God called it square.

            The levites were subdivided into little platoons serving under Aaron and his sons.  You know, the one’s who were left after that incident with the incense back in chapter 10 of Leviticus.  They are divided into the Gershonites, the Kohathites and the Merarites.  Each platoon is led by one of the heads of the Levite families.  I’ll bet you can’t guess what their names were.  Then each of the three groups is given the responsibility to carry and care for a certain collection of the tabernacle structure and  furnishings.  There was a quick reminder to the sons of Aaron to make sure everything is always covered and ready to go before the Kohthites, Gershonites and Merarites start packing it up to make sure none of them accidently see something holy from the sanctuary and die from it.

Day 41 Numbers 1-2

            I take back some of what I said about Leviticus being boring.  Numbers is off to something of a slow start itself.

            God tells Moses to take a census of all the tribes, except the Levites, to determine the strength of the army.  They count all the men able to serve in the army and find there are 603,550 all together, about 50,000 per tribe.  Judah has the most people with 74,600 and the half tribes of Ephram and Menassah, Jacob’s sons, only have around 40 and 32 thousand men, respectively, but they’re both a generation behind the others.  The tribe of Benjamin also has only 35,000, but Benjamin may as well have been a generation behind too, he was so much younger than the others.

            The Levites are exempt from military service because it’s their job to maintain the tabernacle.

            The Lord also lays out how to set up the camp whenever they stop somewhere.  The system they are given is very defensible.  Not everyone sets up their tents at the same time.  The 6 biggest, strongest tribes set up first in two giant divisions near each other.  Once they’re placed, the tabernacle is constructed between them.  Finally the other tribes pitch their tents on the two most open sides of the tabernacle, so if the first two divisions were east and west of the tabernacle, the last two would be north and south, according to God’s plan for setting up the camp.

            So that’s what they did.