Numbers

Numbers, in Hebrew Bemidbar, "In the wilderness," follows Israel from Sinai to the plains of Moab. A generation that left Egypt refuses the promised land and dies in the desert; their children reach the Jordan. Along the way come a priestly blessing that was also engraved on silver amulets, a seer named on a plaster wall, a bronze serpent in copper country, and five sisters who changed the law.

Lessons

1. 1The First CensusNumbers 1 · A year after leaving Egypt, Moses counts every man able to fight: 603,550. The Levites are counted separately to serve the tabernacle in place of Israel's firstborn. How should we read such enormous numbers? Here are the main answers, and the ancient world's own census customs.
2. 2The Camp and Marching OrderNumbers 2–4 · Israel camps in a square around the tabernacle under four tribal banners. The Levites camp in an inner ring and carry the sanctuary: Kohath the holy furniture, covered by the priests; Gershon the curtains; Merari the frames. The Levites take the place of Israel's firstborn, and the numbers in chapter 3 contain a puzzle that an ancient Greek reading may solve.
3. 3Purification, Vows, and the Written BlessingNumbers 5–6 · Three laws for the camp: those with certain impurities go outside it; whoever wrongs a neighbor confesses and repays with a fifth added; and a wife suspected of adultery undergoes an ordeal at the sanctuary. Then the Nazirite vow, open to men and women, and three short lines Aaron is to speak over Israel, lines found engraved on two tiny silver amulets from Jerusalem.
4. 4Gifts, Lamps, and the LevitesNumbers 7–8 · For twelve days the tribal leaders bring identical gifts for the altar, and Numbers records every one. Moses hears God's voice from above the ark. Aaron sets up the seven lamps, and the Levites are purified and presented to begin their service.
5. 5The Cloud MovesNumbers 9–10 · Men made unclean by a death ask to keep Passover, and God gives a second date. The cloud over the tabernacle tells Israel when to move. Two silver trumpets call the people. After nearly a year at Sinai the ark sets out, and Moses' two short prayers are marked in Hebrew Bibles with strange upside-down letters.
6. 6Quail and the Seventy EldersNumbers 11 · Three days out from Sinai, the people complain. They crave the fish, cucumbers and leeks of Egypt. Moses says the burden is too heavy, and God puts His Spirit on seventy elders, and on two men who stayed in the camp. Then quail come, and with them a plague.
7. 7Miriam and Aaron Against MosesNumbers 12 · Miriam and Aaron criticize Moses for marrying a Cushite woman and ask whether God speaks only through him. God answers that Moses is unique among prophets. Miriam is struck with a skin disease, and Israel waits seven days for her.
8. 8The Twelve SpiesNumbers 13 · Twelve tribal leaders scout Canaan for forty days and bring back a cluster of grapes so large two men carry it on a pole. All agree the land is good. Ten say its people are too strong; Caleb says, "Let us go up at once."
9. 9Refusing the Promised LandNumbers 14 · Israel weeps all night and plans to return to Egypt. Moses intercedes and God pardons, but the generation that refused will wander forty years until it dies out. The next morning the people attack anyway and are beaten back to Hormah.
10. 10Tassels of BlueNumbers 15 · Right after the disaster of the spies, God speaks about "when ye be come into the land": the land is still promised. The chapter ends with a command to wear tassels with a thread of blue on every garment. A 3,000-year-old scrap of wool from Timna shows that the precious blue-purple dye was already in use.
11. 11Korah's RebellionNumbers 16 · Korah the Levite and 250 leaders challenge Moses and Aaron: "all the congregation are holy." Dathan and Abiram refuse to come at all. The earth opens beneath the rebels' tents, fire consumes the 250, and their bronze censers become a covering for the altar. When a plague follows, Aaron stands "between the dead and the living."
12. 12Aaron's Staff and the TithesNumbers 17–18 · Twelve staffs are laid before the LORD, and overnight Aaron's sprouts, blossoms and bears almonds. Then God sets out who may approach, who guards the sanctuary, and how priests and Levites, who receive no land, are to live: from the people's gifts and tithes, and the Levites tithe in turn.
13. 13The Red HeiferNumbers 19 · A red cow without blemish is burned outside the camp with cedar, hyssop and scarlet; its ashes, mixed with water, purify anyone who has touched a dead body. The rabbis called it the law no one could fully explain, and it is still at the center of hopes for a rebuilt Temple.
14. 14Meribah and the Road Around EdomNumbers 20 · Miriam dies at Kadesh. The water fails again; Moses strikes the rock instead of speaking to it, and is told he will not enter the land. Edom refuses passage on the King's Highway, and Aaron dies on Mount Hor. Archaeology at Kadesh-barnea raises a hard question.
15. 15The Bronze Serpent and the Songs of the WayNumbers 21:1–20 · After a victory at Hormah, the people complain again, and "fiery serpents" bite them. Moses makes a bronze serpent on a pole; whoever looks at it lives. Then Israel marches north past Moab, quoting a lost "book of the wars of the LORD" and singing to a well. At Timna, in the copper country of the Arabah, archaeologists found a copper snake with a gilded head in a desert tent shrine.
16. 16Sihon and OgNumbers 21:21–35 · Israel asks Sihon, king of the Amorites, for passage on the King's Highway. He attacks and is defeated, and Israel takes Heshbon. Og of Bashan, remembered as the last of the giant Rephaim, falls at Edrei. Excavations at Heshbon and Dibon, an Egyptian route list, and a Ugaritic text about a king in Ashtaroth and Edrei all bear on this chapter.
17. 17Balaam and the DonkeyNumbers 22 · Balak, king of Moab, sends for a famous seer from the Euphrates to curse Israel. God tells Balaam not to go, then lets him go on condition he speaks only God's word. On the road his donkey sees an angel he cannot, and speaks. Outside the Bible, a plaster inscription from Deir Alla in the Jordan valley names the same "Balaam son of Beor, a seer of the gods."
18. 18A Star out of JacobNumbers 23–24 · Three times Balak takes Balaam to a high place and builds seven altars; three times Balaam blesses Israel. His last oracle sees a star rising from Jacob and a scepter from Israel, words that later inspired messianic hopes, a revolt against Rome, and the journey of the Magi.
19. 19Baal Peor and PhinehasNumbers 25 · What Balaam could not do by cursing happens anyway: at Shittim, Israelite men join Moabite women in the worship of Baal of Peor. A plague strikes; Phinehas, Aaron's grandson, kills an Israelite leader and a Midianite woman, and the plague stops. A hard chapter with a long afterlife.
20. 20The Second CensusNumbers 26 · After the plague, on the plains of Moab, Moses and Eleazar count Israel again, tribe by tribe and clan by clan. The total has barely changed, but the tribes have: Simeon has lost almost two-thirds, Manasseh has grown by nearly as much. And not one man counted at Sinai is left except Caleb and Joshua.
21. 21Inheritance and JoshuaNumbers 27 · Five sisters, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, ask for their dead father's land. God rules in their favor, and the law changes. Then God shows Moses the land he will not enter, and Moses asks for a shepherd for the people. Joshua is commissioned before Eleazar the priest, who will seek God's decisions by the Urim.
22. 22The Sacred Calendar and VowsNumbers 28–30 · Two chapters set out what Israel offers every day, every Sabbath, every new moon and at every festival, with the bulls of Booths decreasing from thirteen to seven, seventy in all. Then the law of vows: a word given to God must be kept, though a father or husband may cancel a woman's vow on the day he hears it.
23. 23The War Against MidianNumbers 31 · Moses' last command: avenge Peor on Midian. A thousand men from each tribe defeat Midian and kill its five kings, and Balaam. Moses orders the death of the captive women who had led Israel into apostasy and of the boys. The chapter is told plainly here, with the questions it raises and the ways readers have faced them.
24. 24Reuben, Gad, and the Lands East of the JordanNumbers 32 · Reuben and Gad, rich in cattle, ask to settle in the pasturelands east of the Jordan. Moses agrees, if their men cross and fight with the other tribes. Numbers says Gad built Dibon and Ataroth; in the 9th century BC a Moabite king carved those names, and "the men of Gad," on a stone. The stone is later context, not a record of Moses' day.
25. 25The Wilderness ItineraryNumbers 33 · Numbers 33 lists the stations of Israel's journey from Rameses to the plains of Moab, and says Moses wrote them down. It pauses once, to date Aaron's death to the fortieth year. A few stations can be identified with confidence; most cannot, and no route can be drawn as certain.
26. 26Borders and Cities of RefugeNumbers 34–35 · God draws the borders of Canaan and names the leaders who will divide it. The Levites receive forty-eight cities, six of them cities of refuge where someone who killed by accident can flee from the avenger of blood until trial. The law distinguishes murder from manslaughter, requires more than one witness, and forbids ransom for a murderer.
27. 27Inheritance ProtectedNumbers 36 · The book ends where chapter 27 left off. The leaders of Manasseh point out that if Zelophehad's daughters marry into other tribes, the land will pass with them. The ruling: the daughters may marry whom they choose, within their father's tribe. The five sisters do so, and Numbers closes on the plains of Moab.

How Numbers came to us

Who wrote it, how it was copied, and how it reached the Bible you hold. These lessons follow the book through history.

1. ★How Numbers Came to UsThe date of the story, the age of its traditions, the shaping of the book and the age of its copies are four different questions. Here are the answers we can give for each: Moses and the scholars, silver amulets that are not a copy of Numbers, Dead Sea Scrolls that are, a Samaritan Torah with sixteen major expansions, Greek, Latin and Syriac translations, and what remains unchecked.
2. 2Moses and the TorahWho wrote the five books of Moses, what the Bible itself says about Moses writing, and the oldest surviving words of Scripture.
3. 6The SeptuagintJews in Egypt translated their Scriptures into Greek, creating the Bible of the early church and of the New Testament writers.
4. 7The Dead Sea ScrollsA shepherd's discovery in 1947 gave us Bible manuscripts a thousand years older than any known before, and showed how faithfully the text was kept.
5. 8Hebrew, Greek, and SamaritanThree ancient lines of copying, Hebrew, Greek, and Samaritan, let us compare the text and see where it was preserved and where it changed.
6. 13Scribes, Jerome, and the MasoretesJerome gave the West its Latin Bible; Jewish scholars called the Masoretes guarded the Hebrew text letter by letter.

Journey of a Passage

• ¶Numbers 6:24–26: The priestly blessing: from silver to scroll to synagogueThe oldest known writing of words that also appear in the Bible: two silver amulets, usually dated about 600 BC, carry the priestly blessing in a shorter form. They are quotations of the blessing, not copies of the book of Numbers. Every later witness preserves the three-line blessing with remarkable stability.
• ¶Numbers 10:35–36: Two verses between upside-down lettersIn Hebrew Bibles, Moses' two prayers when the ark moved and rested are set apart by inverted nun letters. The rabbis debated whether the passage was out of place or a book of its own. Some Greek manuscripts put the verses in a different order.
• ¶Numbers 13:33: The spies' report, expanded from DeuteronomyIn the Samaritan Pentateuch, Numbers 13:33 continues with Moses' later speech from Deuteronomy 1:27–33, so that the story and the retelling match. A Dead Sea Scroll of Numbers shows this kind of harmonizing was older than the Samaritans.
• ¶Numbers 24:17: A star, a scepter, or a man?Balaam's last oracle sees "a star out of Jacob, and a scepter out of Israel." The Greek translators wrote "a man" for the scepter, the Aramaic Targum "the Messiah," the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbi Akiva read it of coming leaders, and Matthew's Magi follow a star.
• ¶Numbers 3:28: The Kohathites: 8,600 or 8,300?Numbers counts the three Levite clans at 7,500, 8,600 and 6,200, which make 22,300, yet the total in 3:39 is 22,000. Some Greek manuscripts read 8,300 for the Kohathites, which makes the sum exact. One Hebrew letter could explain the difference.
• ¶Numbers 20:13: Meribah: two passages from DeuteronomyAfter "This is the water of Meribah," the Samaritan Pentateuch inserts two speeches that Deuteronomy places in Moses' mouth: his plea to cross the Jordan (Deuteronomy 3:24–28) and God's command to turn north past Edom (Deuteronomy 2:2–6). A Qumran scroll of Numbers belongs to the same expanded tradition.
• ¶Numbers 24:7: Higher than Agag, or the kingdom of Gog?In Balaam's third oracle, the Hebrew says Israel's king will be "higher than Agag," the Amalekite king of Saul's day. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek read "Gog," the enemy of the last days in Ezekiel. The Greek also reads the whole verse as a prophecy of a coming man.