The Book of Numbers is the continuing story of the Israelites in the wilderness under the leadership of Moses, it (sort of) follows on from Exodus and Leviticus. It contains a lot of name dropping and, true to it's name, Numbers is also full of numbers
2. The camping arrangement for the military units is set out according to the order they should march
3. 22,000 Levites are enrolled to order and maintain the holy tent
4. Two of the Levite tribes are given responsibility for carrying the parts and accessories of the holy tent
5. Moses is told to be sure that no ritually unclean people are allowed near the holy tent, and a testing process of drinking 'bitter water' is described for women suspected of adultery
6. Instructions for people who want to dedicate some time to serving God, and a priestly blessing
7. Describes in somewhat tedious detail the dedication of the holy tent over 12 days, where each tribe in turn offered an exact number of various things
8. The male adult members of the Levite tribe are purified and offered to God, in order to serve in the holy tent
9. When it comes to observing the Passover festival everyone, including visitors, can take part
10. With a blast of trumpets and help from friendly neighbours, the whole Israelite camp marches into the desert with the covenant chest leading the way
11. Lots of moaning; the people moan to Moses for want of meat, Moses moans to God about the demands of the people and God responds (somewhat grumpily) with helpers for Moses and enough meat to choke everyone
12. God gets drawn into a family spat with Aaron and Miriam against Moses, which Miriam loses
13. The representatives of each tribe that Moses sends to check out the promised land come back with mixed messages because some are scared of the current inhabitants
14. Moses intervenes to stop God destroying the people who are afraid and want to run away from the promised land, but their punishment is that they will never enter it
15. Instructions about sacrifices (to keep God happy) and what to do when people get it wrong by accident or on purpose
16. Some of the Levites who have not been admitted to the priesthood rail against the authority of Moses and Aaron, and then all seem to die sudden horrible deaths
17. A test of Aaron's status among the Levites is undertaken
18. God tells Aaron that the Levites and priests who serve the holy tent are not allowed to own land, but in compensation they will be fed by the offerings that the rest of the people make to God
19. A very elaborate week long procedure is described for ritually purifying anyone who has had contact with a dead body
20. Moses messes up somehow in his priestly part, and even though a miracle of water in the desert happens and he is punished by God for his error
21. The Israelites march across the desert lands conquering the people's who won't let them cross and seeking help from God whenever things don't go their way
22. Some of those whose land the Israelites are wanting to cross also seek God's guidance, but they aren't good at listening to God and have to be guided via a smart donkey
23. King Balak repeatedly asks the oracle Balaam to curse the Israelites, but God keeps giving him words of blessing for them
24. Balak is furious with Balaam because of the blessings on the Israelites, the oracle makes a final proclamation that there is to be a shift in power among the established tribes and that those chosen by God will prevail
25. Foreign women become targets during power struggles among the Israelites, and Aaron's grandson Phinehas is rewarded for murdering an influential foreign women and the Israelite man she with as they walk through the camp together
26. The sons in the clans old enough to serve in the army are counted and named, if a clan had no sons the daughters are named instead
27. Moses knows he is dying and so authorises a new leader (Joshua), and updates inheritance law so that daughters can inherit where there are no sons in a clan
28. Instructions for daily, monthly and yearly sacrificial offerings of animals, grain, oil and wine to be made at the holy tent
29. A detailed accounting of the enormous number of animal, grain, oil and wine sacrifices required for the festivals of Passover and Booths
30. A reminder that vows made to God must be kept - unless you are a woman and your father or husband either disapproves of the vow or causes the woman to break it
31. After a very successful military campaign against the Midianites, the spoils of war are counted
32. Some of the clans decide that the grass is greener on this side of the Jordan and ask Moses if they can be excused from settling in the promised land
33. The stages of the journey from Egypt to Canaan are recounted
34. The boundaries of the promised land are outlined, and leaders are chosen to divide the land among the nine and a half tribes who have chosen to dwell there
35. The Israelites are instructed to set aside land for the priests and to set up refuge cities for those under a death sentence
36. It is agreed that daughters who inherit property cannot take their property rights with them if they marry into another tribe (so they are encouraged to marry cousins)
Numbers tracks the rapid change from the broken and frightened people who escaped from Egypt to a conquering army that claims land in God's name. It also contains an abundance of lists - lists upon lists, upon lists. People's names, place names, numbers of people and animals and items. It is a stock takers delight!
Life is often not nice for women in the Numbers story. In chapter five jealous men are permitted to test their wives by seeing what happens if they drink contaminated water. Supposedly a woman who's has had an affair and become pregnant by it will miscarry as a result of this test. I wonder how many women were saved from false accusation by this method and how many innocent women condemned? There is small comfort in the fact that there was a testing process and also that men couldn't just condemn women without evidence. The affection that Moses, Aaron and the whole camp have for Miriam is displayed frequently but particularly in chapter 11 where God is asked to heal her of the skin disease she becomes afflicted with as a result of her rebellion against Moses. Then everyone chooses to pause in their journey until she is well enough to travel again. Miriam has clear authority and respect but she it not given special treatment for being a relative of the two most important men in the camp, she must pay her dues like anyone else. It is also clear that Miriam and Aaron are able to hear God, although not as clearly as Moses does. Further to this it seems that women can follow a religious calling to become nazirites, and can make vows to God which men had to respect or pay the cost of breaking (chapter 30) - I wonder what kinds of vows women made in these times?
A murderous story involving foreign women unfolds in chapter 25 when a man picks up a spear and stabs an Israelite man and a foreign woman as they walk through the community. The action is celebrated, and righteous jealousy for God is used as a justification for this violent behaviour. I had to turn to commentaries to help me process my feelings about what was happening in this text. One commentator suggests that the Moabites and Midianites (2 tribes but closely linked in Israelite understanding) were plotting the overthrow of the Israelites and deliberately using pretty girls to lead the men into sin. The event which led to Phinehas picking up his spear was an escalation which saw the idolatrous intentions of the Moabites/Midianites move from the edges of the camp to the heart of the community. The evidence that Phinehas' spear action was in line with God's will was the sudden end of a plague which had been sweeping through the community. The swerving of the Israelite men away from God to the idolatrous worship and subsequent acceptance to Moabite/Midianite ways seems to have been widespread as a number of chieftains are executed and their bodies put on display as a warning after joining in with foreign worship and consorting with foreign women. These are hard and brutal times. My heart still grieves for those women of Moab and Midian unwillingly caught up in these power struggles
More horrible things happen to foreign women (and girls) in chapter 31, when the virgin daughters of the conquered Midianites are numbered among the 'spoils of war', along with animals and precious metals. These young girls are given away as a reward to the successful soldiers. It's a familiar story and one that never fails to sicken me. There is a suggestion that the instruction from God was total slaughter of the Midianites, not capture - would this have been more merciful for those girls than what they were subjected to after watching everyone they knew slaughtered? I don't know, and I struggle to find much trace of the merciful God I love in these kinds of stories
Unsurprisingly Numbers didn't give me many laugh out loud moments, but I did chuckle to discover that among the many lists of special items associated with the holy tent, only the Kohathite's were allowed to carry the special meat fork used at the altar - perhaps they were the only ones who could be trusted not to lose such an important piece of kit?! There was also some comedy in the Balak/Balaam story; first a sorrowful talking donkey (surely the inspiration for Eeyore?) Then Balak getting Balaam to move around to different sites to see if he could come up with a curse against Israel ("look at them from over here, surely when you look from this side you can see that they deserve to be cursed... How about here?)
So much of the peoples behaviour in this story is fear driven and cruel, but perhaps this is unsurprising, after all the Israelites have taken huge risks in following and trusting Moses and are afraid of being wiped out. Even with all the portents suggesting that God is with them, they find it hard to trust because their lives and the lives of their whole household are on the line. They are looking to take possession of a land already inhabited by established peoples who have fortifications and seem strong. Their doubts and fears are very reasonable, and I sometimes felt that the whole story of Israel was balanced on a blade during this time in the wilderness. By the end only 2 men from among all those who left Egypt will live to enter the promised land. These were testing times for Israel
There were a few other interesting little details in Numbers but overall I found it a difficult read, aside from some of the treatment of people and the long lists, the timeline also seems to jump about a bit. Moses is at the end of his life in chapter 27, but then the story seems to rewind. The matter of daughters inheriting land which begins in 26 gets randomly revisited in 36. Also priests can't own land in 18 but can in 36. I'm sure there are scholarly explanations for all this, but I wasn't interested enough to delve deeper. More than that though I struggled with the way that God is depicted. God seems to serve the desires of people (men mostly), and seems harsh.
I happened to be reading the first book from the Game of Thrones series for part of the time that I was reading Numbers, which also follows a story steeped in human power struggles and clannishness. However, the popular fantasy story lacks God entirely. There is a kind of spirituality but no suggestion of a merciful God guiding anyone in George RR Martin's world, which (in my view) makes the story somewhat pointless and tedious. Stories of human power struggles and cruelty, without any hope of redemption or salvation just feel pointless to me, an endless cycle of success and failure, of pleasure and suffering for only short term material gain. I would rather read Numbers than the other, even though GoT has far more action and better descriptive language than any biblical book