Introduction
It is called Numbers because it starts by numbering the people of Israel. It contains history from the second month of the second year until the eleventh month of the 40th year after their going out of Egypt.
Structure:
- Chapters 1-9: Various orders of people are described, several laws are given or repeated.
- Chapters 10-33: Narrative stories about Israel’s wanderings.
Chapter 1
Key themes:
- God commands Moses and Aaron to count the males, fit for war, from twenty years and upwards, from each tribe. Total of 603550 men.
- The princes of the tribes are listed.
- The Levites are not counted, they are responsible for carrying and attending to the tabernacle and ministering.
Questions:
- What do these numbers represent?
Chapter 2
Key themes:
- Numbering of the tribes of Israel and where they should stay in the camp.
Chapter 3
Key themes:
- God takes the Levites and their cattle in the place of the first-born of Israel. They are set apart to take care of the temple of Israel, and each family takes care of part of the ministerial responsibility, not everyone in the priesthood (only the sons of Aaron).
- The Levites are numbered.
- Israel should redeem its first-borns by paying God the exceeding, minus the Levites. They pay God by paying Aaron.
Chapter 4
Key themes:
- Numbering of the Levite families (Kohath, Gershon, Merari) and their responsibilities. Each Levite served from 30 yo to 50 yo.
Chapter 5
Key themes:
- Leprous people can’t stay inside the camp.
- Whenever a person commits a sin, he shall confess it and pay restitutions with a fifth added.
- Ritual of husband jealousy that brings a curse upon the women if they have committed adultery. In establishes a trial, where the defendant (the wife) is assumed to be innocent, unless a miracle happens (getting bad because of drinking holy water with dust).
Chapter 6
Key themes:
- Establishes the law for making the vow of Nazirite, a vow of separation to God. During the vow, the person cannot drink wine and strong drink or any produce from the grapevine, and cannot approach dead bodies.
- Num 6:22-27 establishes the ritual for blessing.
Chapter 7
Key themes:
- After the construction of the tabernacle was finished, the leaders of each tribe (12) make offerings for the tabernacle.
- Moses encounter God’s voice coming from the mercy seat above the ark of the covenant.
Chapter 8
Key themes:
- The Levites were taken in place of all the firstborns, as God had consecrated the firstborns to Him in the Passover in Egypt.
- The Lord commanded Moses to cleanse and purify the Levites to consecrate them to service in the tabernacle.
Chapter 9
Key themes:
- Ritually unclean people in the time of the Passover (14th day of the 1st month) keep the Passover on the 14th day of the second month, with the same statues.
- Whoever refuses to take part in the Passover sacrifice is cut off from the people of God.
- The Lord guided Israel through his presence in the cloud and fire over the tabernacle. He guided them by staying on top of the tabernacle to keep the Israel encamped where it was or moving to where Israel should move.
Chapter 10
Key themes:
- The Lord commands Moses to build two silver trumpets that serve to gather the people and the leaders of Israel.
- The Cloud guides them to leave the wilderness of Sinai and go to the wilderness of Paran.
Chapter 11
Key themes:
- The people complained about their misfortune; The people started complaining asking for meat, instead of only eating Manna.
- Moses complains that he has all the burden of dealing with the Israelites.
- The Lord promises that He will give meat to the people; the Lord appoints seventy elders to help Moses.
- Two other elders not appointed by Moses receive the Spirit and start prophesying, Joshua tells this to Moses, and Moses responds by saying that the Lord wanted everyone to be a prophet.
Questions:
- What does it mean to prophesy?
Chapter 12
Key themes:
- Miriam and Aaron spoke out against Moses because of his marriage with a Cushite (Ethiopian) woman, and questioning his authority. Because of this overstep in authority, envy, and pride, Miriam is punished with leprosy. Moses intercedes and God makes she stay outside the camp for 7 days.
Chapter 13
Key themes:
- Spies are sent to the land of Canaan, and they come back reporting it is a great land with great fruits, but with a strong people inhabiting it.
- (Don’t understand this part v32-33) They say to the people of Israel that it is a land that devours its inhabitants and is populated with the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, that comes from the Nephilim).
Chapter 14
Key themes:
- Upon hearing the evil report, the people of Israel complain that the Lord brought them to the wilderness, and conspire to elect a captain and go back to Egypt. Joshua and Caleb stood faithful to God, and the people wanted to stone them.
- Moses intercedes in behalf of the people so that the Lord doesn’t abandon them.
- The rebels won’t get into the promised land, and because of their iniquity, they will dwell in the wilderness for 40 years, until all of them die.
- After this, they rebel again and try to conquer the promised land by themselves. Moses opposes and says to them to not do it, but they do it anyway, and get slaughtered by the Amalekites and Canaanites.
Moral sense:
- In our own battle against sin and towards sainthood, if we fail to follow God and fight our battles, there will be consequences for our children, and they will have to pick up where we left off.
Chapter 15
Key themes:
- Rules for sin offerings. Applies for natives and sojourners.
- If someone sins “with a high hand”, wittingly, he shall be cut off from the people.
- Death penalty for working on the sabbath.
- Tassels on clothes, so that the people remember to be faithful the their commandments, and not follow their own hearts and eyes.
Chapter 16
Key themes:
- A assembly of 250 leaders of the congregation, led by Korah (Levi), Dathan and Abiram (Eliab), On (Reuben), rebel against Moses and Aaron.
- Korah is punished by being swallowed into the ground with all his things and men that belonged to him.
- The congregation rebels against Moses and Aaron because of Korah’s death, and the Lord plagues the people, but Aaron makes atonement by offering incense and the plague stops.
Highlights sacrifice as a way of appeasing divine wrath.
Chapter 17
Key themes:
- God gives a sign to stop the people from questioning the leadership of Aaron, by sprouting his rod among all the leaders’ rods.
Questions:
- Didn’t understand v12-13
Chapter 18
Key themes:
- The Levites have received the gift to serve the people in the sanctuary, and only them shall do it. It ia grave sin for anyone else to do it.
- The Levites have no inheritance, but God has given them all the tithes to them. The priests have to offer tithes on the tithes they receive, and deliver them to Aaron.
Chapter 19
Key themes:
- Offering for the removal of sin by sacrificing a spotless heifer, made by Eleazar the priest.
- Provisions for the water of impurity, that cleanses people of ritual uncleanliness.
Chapter 20
Key themes:
- The people rebel again, because in Meribah they did not have water to drink.
- God commanded Moses to tell the rock to yield its water, but Moses hit the rock with his rod (twice), thus not believing the Lord. Because of this, Moses will not enter the promised land, and Aaron is replaced by Eleazar, and dies after.
- Edom (Esau) doesn’t let Israel pass by its kingdom.
Allegorical sense:
- The rock is figure of Christ. What does the water simbolizes? Life, perhaps?
- Perhaps not only disobedience was Moses’ fault, but also hitting Christ to get what he wanted the way he wanted to do.
Chapter 21
Key themes:
- The king of a Arad, a Canaanite fought against Israel, and when they promised to utterly destroy their cities, God gave over the Canaanites to them.
- The Israelites became impatient while going around Edom, and murmured against God and against Moses. God punished them by sending fiery serpents.
- Moses prayed for the people, and God commanded him to make a fiery serpent, so that people that were bitten by a snake could look at the snake and be cured.
- The Amorites and Bashan attacked Israel and Israel won and settled in their cities.
Allegorical sense:
- The serpent is a type of Christ (Jn 3:14), set up on a pole, and everyone who sees it (believes it) shall live (is cured / is saved).
Moral sense: 2. God concedes the prayers that align with His plan for us. 3. Sometimes God punishes us as a lesson, so that we may suffer here and not in the eternal life.
Questions:
- What is the Book of the Wars of the Lord
Chapter 22
Key themes:
- The story of Balaam and his donkey.
Questions:
- Why did God “allowed” Balaam to go, but then got angry with him?
- False piety? In the exterior he said he would not go even if they gave him a house of gold and silver (v18), but still wanted to go.
- The Angel doesn’t punish him, only warns him.
- St Peter will later talk about this story in 2 Peter 2:15
Chapter 23
Key themes:
- Balak leads Balaam and sets up altars to him, so he can curse Israel. But each time, Balaam only does what the Lord has said, and does not curse Israel.
Chapter 24
Key themes:
- The oracles of Balaam are blessings to Israel, and reveal the destruction of the Canaanites. Balak gets angry with Balaam, but he only prophesy what God lets him.
Chapter 25
Key themes:
- Israel started worshipping Baal and committing sexual immorality with the Moabites and the Midianites. The wrath of the Lord is kindled against Israel because of it.
- The plague (where it started?) is stopped after Phinehas son of Elezar kills a Israelite and the Midianite woman that he was engaging in sexual immorality, it seems that maybe publicly (in the sight of Moses and of all the children of Israel), during a time of mourning (“weeping before the door of the tabernacle”), near the tabernacle.
Chapter 26
Key themes:
- A new census done in the plains of Moab.
- Land inheritance will be proportional to tribe size. The Levites don’t get land inheritance. God and his providence is their inheritance.
- There were no one that was in the wilderness (in the first census), as they died and the Lord said that they would die in the wilderness. Only Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.
Noteworthy:
- God killed Korah because of his rebellion, but did not kill his sons.
Questions:
- Significant changes in translation between RSV-CE and Doauy-Rheims…
Chapter 27
Key themes:
- Daughters gets inheritance if the father doesn’t have any son.
- Joshua is appointed as Moses’ successors.
Allegorical sense:
- Joshua’s appointment foreshadow new covenant’s priesthood, where there is apostolic succession through laying of hands, and it communicates authority and responsibility.
Chapter 28
Key themes:
- Rules on habitual offerings the people of God should make: continual burnt offerings, sabbath offering, beginning of the month offerings, passover offerings, day of the first fruits offerings.
- All of them include male lambs, fine flour, and drink offerings. For sin offering, a goat is sacrificed.
Chapter 29
Key themes:
- Offerings to be done in the holy days of Trumpets (1st day of 7th month), Atonement (15th day), and the feast of Tabernacles (15th-22nd days).
Chapter 30
Key themes:
- Men should not break vows or pledges they make.
- When a woman is under the leadership of a man, such as a daughter is her father’s house or a wife, the father or husband has the responsibility for any promise or vow a woman makes. Therefore, on the day he hears the promise, he can either make it void or establish it.
Chapter 31
Key themes:
- The Lord exact justice against the Midianites, by sending Israel to war against them. Not only the men were killed, but Moses commanded the army to kill the adult women, as they were wicked and the reason “the plague” afflicted Israel.
Questions:
- Tough chapter.
- What the Midianites have done to deserve having them destroyed?
- What exactly was and the reasons for “the plague” that afflicted Israel? (also seen in Chapter 25)
Allegorical notes:
- In the fight against sin, we should root out all of the occasions of sin and attachments that might lead to sin (represented here by the Midianite women).
Chapter 32
Key themes:
- The sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad ask to settle in the land of Gad and Gilead (east of the Jordan, conquered from the Amorites, Numbers 21:32), because it was a good land for cattle.
- This sparked a controversy with Moses, because it implied that the Reubenites and Gadites would not fight for the promised land, just as the spies that went to the Land in the beginning of the desert wanderings.
- Then, they made an oath that they would be on the frontlines (v. 17) and would only return to their homes after Israel conquered their land.
- Thus, Moses gave to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh the kingdoms of Sihon (Amorites) and Og (Bashan).
Chapter 33
Key themes:
- Recounts Israel 40-year wandering, and the name of the places where they have been.
- Aaron died in the 40th year, with 123 years.
- The Lord said that if the people do not drive out the Canaanites out of the land, He will do to the Israelites as they should have done.
Chapter 34
Key themes:
- Boundaries of the promised land in Canaan.
- Who will divide the land: Eleazar and Joshua, along with leaders of the nine tribes and the half-tribe (the tribes of Israel excluding Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, as they will have land eastward of the Jordan).
Chapter 35
Key themes:
- In the midst of the land of the tribes, 42 cities shall be given to the Levites along with land around for pasture. The 6 refuge cities shall also be given to the Levites.
- Ordinances for the congregation to discern between a murderer and an unintentional manslayer.
- Statues for the usage of the refuge cities by manslayers.
Chapter 36
Key themes:
- Inheritance shall not be transferred between tribes of Israel. Thus, daughters that received inheritance because there was no son, must marry men of the same tribe.