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Numbers (Introduction)

Numbers
NumbersSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg provides a comprehensive introduction to the book of Numbers in the Old Testament, highlighting its significance as a pivotal part of the Pentateuch. He discusses how Numbers follows the traditions of Jehovah's Elohim and the priestly tradition, attributing its authorship to Moses. Gregg notes that Numbers is primarily a historical narrative, featuring characters like Balaam and Korah. He explores the challenges of imagining the magnitude of the Israelites' journey through the wilderness and the reasons behind their difficulties in occupying the Promised Land. The speaker also draws connections to the New Testament, showing how the book of Numbers is relevant to understanding Jesus' life and the challenges faced by believers today.

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Transcript

We now begin the fourth book of the Pentateuch, and there are only five, so we can see that we're past the halfway mark, and that's an encouraging landmark in our study through this important portion of the Old Testament. Some books of the Pentateuch are more interesting than others, that is to a general readership, and Numbers has some sections that are not as interesting as some, because a lot of the chapters are simply lists of each tribe, how many people were in the tribe, who their leader was. In some cases, each prince brought a gift, each one an identical gift, and it gives all the details of the gifts they bring.
It's clear that Moses and God really enjoyed giving specifics and details about these things. Modern readers often may find it tedious, and therefore there are some parts of Numbers that are troublesome just because of that. It's a little bit like when you start reading through the Bible and you come to Genesis 5, and it's a whole chapter of genealogies, and you find another one in chapter 11, and actually chapter 10 even of Genesis is difficult because it's just a list of nations that we don't know much about, and we can't relate with very easily.
Numbers is that way, too. It starts that way. It starts with lists and
censuses, but then there is very much interesting material in it.
It's called Numbers quite
mistakenly. It isn't really what the Hebrews called the book, it's what the Septuagint called the book. As in most cases, the Hebrews gave the book a name from its first verse, although the books we've seen so far, Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, have been named in the Hebrew Bible after the first words in each of those books.
This one is named after the
fourth word in the book, which is b'midbar, which means in the wilderness. So the Hebrew name of this book is in the wilderness, which is a much better description of its contents than Numbers. Obviously the reason it's called Numbers is because there are two important sections that are concerned with Numbers.
The census at the beginning of the book, in
the first four chapters especially, and then another census that is taken later, forty years later or thirty-eight years later, in chapter 26. Yet those are really a very small portion of the book. We've got thirty-six chapters, and that's only five chapters given over to Numbers.
The rest is the story of the children of Israel in the wilderness, and the story
picks up pretty much where Exodus left off, about a month afterwards. At the end of the book of Exodus, the tabernacle was set up on the first day of the first month of the second year. They had left Egypt the fifteenth day of the first month of the first year.
So it was now almost, when the tabernacle was set up, it was almost exactly one year after the departure from Egypt, and they had been at Mount Sinai for many months at that time. The book of Leviticus, which intervenes between the close of Exodus and the beginning of Numbers, is only laws. There's not really much historical information.
The consecration
of the priests and the death of Nadab and Abihu, as well as the death of a blasphemer, are the only historical events in the book of Leviticus. So there's been no historical movement between the end of Exodus and the beginning of Numbers. Numbers begins in the beginning of the second month of the second year, so it's just one month after the tabernacle was erected.
That means that the material in Leviticus all pretty much is sandwiched
into one month, if it was all written at one time, which is not certain. But the book of Numbers, although it picks up right after the erection of the tabernacle, the historical story, it is probably written, it must have been written in the fortieth year, the last year of Moses' life, because it contains information about that year. It does not bring us all the way to the point of Moses' death.
That remains for Deuteronomy to do. The book
of Deuteronomy will give us mainly just some sermons that Moses gave just before he died, and then Deuteronomy will record his death. And those sermons were given just at the very end of the forty years of wandering.
This book is about the forty years of wandering,
although that's kind of a misnomer, because very little is said about the forty years of wandering. There are about ten chapters or so about the first part of that time, all in the second year, and then a few chapters cover thirty-eight years, but don't say much about it. The thirty-eight years were just wasted time, for the most part, for Israel, and it was a judgment upon them that they had to wander thirty-eight years in the wilderness.
They weren't lost. They actually got to the border of Canaan quite early on in chapter 13, but because of their rebellion against God, he turned them back and made them wander in the desert until that whole generation had died off. At the end of thirty-eight years of wandering, they came back to the same place and were ready to cross over.
Well, not to
the same place, I take that back. They came to the plains of Moab, and they were ready to cross over the Jordan, and that's how the book closes. They are there, poised to cross the river from Jericho, which was going to be their first target in the invasion, but that invasion doesn't happen until the book of Joshua.
So we have in the book of Numbers coverage of a whole transition from one generation to another. In the early chapters, we have the generation that came out of Egypt. In the later chapters, we have the generation of their children, who were under twenty years old at the time of the Exodus.
All the older generation had died by then, except for Moses
and Joshua and Caleb. Even Moses was to die before going into the Promised Land. Only Joshua and Caleb, because they were faithful spies and brought back a faithful witness in favor of God, only they of that generation were allowed to go into the Promised Land.
As far as the authorship of this book, the whole Pentateuch is regarded by Old and New Testament writers to be written by Moses, and we really wouldn't have any reason to question that if not for the fact that in the nineteenth century, liberal scholarship began to discuss other sources of the information. They came up with the documentary hypothesis which suggests that there were four different traditions woven together. They say that by definition, a lot of the stories in this book are from the Jehovah's Elohim tradition, whereas the laws and so forth are from the priestly tradition.
So they try to break it
up like a jigsaw puzzle, just like they do the rest of the Pentateuch. However, we saw that with reference to the other books of the Pentateuch, most of them are quoted in the New Testament even by Jesus, and said to be written by Moses. So the Christian who believes in Jesus will believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or will believe that Jesus was mistaken or lying, which means we don't believe in Jesus.
If we believe he was
mistaken or lying, it means we don't believe he is the Son of God and we aren't believers. So as Christians, we essentially have to believe in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. In fact, Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees, not about their belief in the authorship of the Pentateuch, but simply their lack of belief in the Pentateuch.
Although they did believe,
but he said they didn't really believe. In John 5, verses 45-47, the last three verses of John 5, Jesus said, Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust.
For if you believed Moses, you would believe
me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? And that last question is a very important question for those who doubt the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. If you don't believe in Moses' writings, then how can you believe in Jesus' words? He believed in them.
He said Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
If Moses did not, then Jesus was wrong, and we can't believe Jesus as an authority either. I would say that the book of Numbers is not itself quoted in the New Testament as being written by Moses.
It is, of course, spoken of a great deal. The events in the book of
Numbers are spoken of a great deal in the New Testament, but there is not a statement that says that Moses wrote it, nor is there a statement that way about Genesis in the New Testament. Genesis is quoted a great deal in the New Testament, but there is not a statement in the New Testament that says Moses wrote it.
But there are statements in the New Testament
that say that Exodus was written by Moses, and that Leviticus was written by Moses, and that Deuteronomy was written by Moses. It is very clear that Genesis and Numbers are part of the same literary collection, and that they make one consistent work from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy. It is one story, and Moses is the main character books.
The book of Numbers opens presupposing that the readers have already read Genesis,
Exodus and Leviticus. Verse 1 says, Now the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of meeting, on the first day of the second month and the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt. Yahweh is mentioned here, who was introduced in Genesis.
There is reference to Moses, who is introduced in Exodus. There is reference
to them coming out of Egypt, which is the story found in Exodus. There is mention of the tabernacle, which is introduced in Exodus.
There is mention of being in the wilderness,
which is mentioned in Exodus. So the stories of Genesis and Exodus certainly are presupposed at the very outset in the book of Numbers, so it is part of the continuing saga. It is the natural sequel to the books we have already been studying.
Moses is mentioned at
least twice as writing things down in the book of Numbers. If we can accept the testimony of the book itself, we know that Moses at least wrote parts of it with his own hands. In chapter 33, verses 1 and 2, it says, These are the journeys of the children of Israel, who went out of the land of Egypt by their armies under the hand of Moses and Aaron.
Now Moses wrote down the starting points of the journeys at the command of the Lord, and these are the journeys according to the starting points. So it gives a list of the encampments that Israel stayed at during their wanderings. But it says Moses wrote down those things.
Likewise, in chapter 36, verse 13, it says, These are the judgments which the Lord commanded the children of Israel by the hand of Moses in the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across Jericho. That statement makes it very clear that these things were given to Moses. Of course, there are many times throughout the book that Moses is mentioned as receiving these things.
In fact, almost the opening verse of every chapter starts out with saying,
The Lord spoke to Moses. And so the book certainly claims Moses as its author. Now the New Testament, although it doesn't specifically attribute the book of Numbers to Moses, it does in many places treat the stories in the book of Numbers as if they are true stories.
We see a number of cases, for example, in John 3.14. Jesus said, As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also shall the Son of Man be lifted up. That whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. He mentioned the event of the serpent being raised up as if it was a historical event, which of course is presented as such in the book of Numbers.
In 1 Corinthians 10, verses 4-11, Paul lists
children of Israel mentioned in the book of Numbers, including them drinking from the stone and them rebelling against God and all that. He says these things all happened to them as types or examples for us. So Paul affirms that these stories were true and that they really did happen to the Israelites.
In Hebrews 3, verses 16-19, we have the writer of Hebrews
affirming the story of how the Israelites refused to go into the land of Canaan, which is of course from the 13th chapter of Numbers. He treats it certainly as a historical fact. He says, For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now, with whom was he angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who did not obey? We see then that they could not enter in because of unbelief.
And of course, chapter 4, verse 1, also affirms that they failed to enter
into the rest because they, verse 2 says, For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. So it does talk about their failure as if it's a historical reality. In 2 Peter, chapter 2, we have reference to Balaam as a historical figure.
Verses 15
and 16 says, They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Baor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. But he was rebuked for his iniquity. A dumb donkey, speaking with a man's voice, restrained the madness of the world.
So Balaam's story, which occupies several chapters in the book of Numbers and
is only known from Numbers, is affirmed to be a true story. In Jude, verse 11, speaking about false teachers in Jude's day, he says, Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain and have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit and perished in the rebellion of Korah. Now, Balaam and Korah are both characters known only from the book of Numbers.
And so
we can see that whether you want to quote Jesus or Paul or the writer of Hebrews or Peter or Jude, they all take the stories in the book of Numbers to be accurate. Now, obviously, if they consider the stories in Numbers to be accurate, then they must consider them to be about Moses. Jesus, as Moses, lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.
They therefore
seem to confirm that the book of Numbers is reliable in its historical statements. That would include the statement to say, The Lord said to Moses, and Moses wrote this down. Those are also historical statements in the book of Numbers.
And if we accept the other
stories in them, there's no reason to doubt those statements as well. Obviously, the book of Numbers has some legislation in it. It is part of the law.
It has other material
in it has historical narrative. It has tribal lists and things like that, censuses, but it contains laws as well. It's got the law of the Nazarite, the law of the ordeal of jealousy and numerous other laws, and therefore it is part of the law.
And the New Testament
says that the law was given by Moses. And there's many places, actually, the Old Testament says so also. In Joshua, in Kings, in Nehemiah, I've given you references in your notes.
We
won't look at all of them, but all of them attribute the law to the hand of Moses. Even Jesus did in John 7, 19. He said, Did not Moses give you the law? And yet none of you keeps the law, since the law is contained in the book of Numbers.
And by the way, to
the Jew, the word, the law means the Torah, which itself means the penitent, the five books when Jesus did not Moses give you the Torah. That's what he said. He means the five books.
He's basically affirming the mosaic authorship of the whole collection. There
are some other literary sources that are mentioned in the book of Numbers as being familiar to Moses, who wrote it, or perhaps to a later editor, because just because Moses wrote the law or gave the law doesn't mean that he put all the final touches on the final literary work as we have it. Moses could have left memoirs, journals, lists and things like that, as well as having written down the laws that God gave.
And somebody else
could easily have put those stuff together in its present form with editorial comments. We know, for example, in chapter 12, it says Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth. It's most people feel it's not likely that Moses wrote those words himself, but probably were written by somebody like Joshua, who is the most likely candidate who would have put all the material together after Moses died.
After all, somebody had to write about
his death. In Deuteronomy, the last portion of the last chapter, describes the death of Moses and says, Since Moses has died, there has not yet arisen a prophet like unto him. So obviously the last words in the book of Deuteronomy are written after Moses was dead and even some little while afterwards, because since he died, we have not yet seen a prophet like him arise.
So we allow that Moses might not have written every word in these. It's
still the books of Moses that they could well have been put together by Joshua or somebody else after Moses death in their present form. And it's even possible later editors made comments about other works like in chapter 21.
It mentions the book of the wars of the
Lord. Whatever that was, it's a lost book to us, but it was known then. It says in verse 14, Therefore, it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord, Why have been so far the books of Arnon, the slopes of the books that reaches to the dwelling of our and lies on the border of Moab? Well, maybe that book was not a bestseller, so it didn't really survive, but they knew of it.
If it was all like that passage, I can see why it wasn't
a bestseller. But the point is, it was another literary work known either to Moses or to whoever put the final work together as we have it now. There's also in the same chapter reference to something called the song of the well.
Who wrote that? We do not know, but
it's mentioned in chapter 21 verses 17 and 18. Then they sang this song and Israel sang the song spring up. Well, all you who sing to it.
The well, the leaders sank, died by
the nation's nobles by the lawgiver with their slaves. This song is thought to be a song that they had is recorded in some other source that is added to the book of numbers, but I'm not sure exactly why scholars have convinced of that. The prophecies of Balaam that are found in numbers 23 and 24 probably were written also, although we know that Balaam uttered them verbally.
Somebody must have written them down because the Israelites were
not present when these prophecies were given, and therefore there probably was a scribe with Balaam when he was prophesying and they got written down. And once the Mubais were defeated in war, these records of Balaam's speeches probably were collected by the Israelites and incorporated by Moses or by the editors of this book in numbers. The idea that numbers would have been written centuries after the time of Moses, as critical scholars sometimes suggest, doesn't make very much sense because there are so many things in the book that would not be relevant to Israel after the time of Moses.
After they moved into the
promised land, a lot of the stuff in the book wouldn't be of concern to them. Why would they come up with detailed lists of who's going to carry what article of the tabernacle and who's going to tear it down and what order they're going to march in and so forth and write chapter after chapter on these kinds of things at a time after the tabernacle was no longer moving, after they'd come into the land and they'd settled. You see, it's obvious that the book was written at a time when the wandering in the wilderness was the reality of the people, and therefore these concerns needed to be enunciated and preserved for them.
And it would not make any sense for a later generation to create this out of thin
air when it would just be totally irrelevant to the concerns of Israel. the book of Numbers. Most of them have to do with the actual numbers themselves, although there are problems related to other issues in the book.
But the first census, which agrees
in its content with the numbers in Exodus chapter 38 where there was also a census taken for the half shekel tax, indicates that there were 603,550 male Israelites over 20 years old. Now, that means that number does not include women nor children. And for that reason, for men over 60, I believe we're not included in that census.
So we've got old people, children
and women not included, and yet the number is over 600,000 people. So if you add women to that, let's just say an equal number of women that age, you've already got over a million people. And then if you add children, which could easily number as many as adults and old people, then you could easily have between two and a half million and three million people marching through the wilderness.
Now, skeptics have often thought that that is not very reasonable,
and even people who aren't skeptics have had a hard time knowing how to harmonize that with certain information. For example, how does a group of 70 men, seven heads of households who migrated into Egypt with Jacob, grow to a group of 600,000 heads of households from 70 to 600,000 in the time that they were in Egypt? Now, the answer to that is it can be done. It's remarkable, but it can be done.
There are, of course, two different theories
about how long they were in Egypt. Some people believe they were in there 430 years. Others believe 215 years, and they take the 430 years that's mentioned to be the whole time from Abraham's call to the Exodus.
And the time in Egypt was only 215 years. But we know that
when they went into Egypt, there were only 70 heads of households, and there were about 600,000 when they came out. If they were there 430 years, their population would have had to double every 25 years, which is not impossible.
It means that a young couple would have to
have two children by the time they're 25. Now, if they married in their teens, they could easily have four or five children by the time they're 25. They didn't use birth control, and they wanted large families.
We don't know that they all had large families,
because not everyone who wants a large family gets one. But the truth is, there could easily have been families that had five, six, seven children by the time the parents were 25 years old. If the girls got married when they were 13, which is not too uncommon in the Middle East, and let's say men were a bit older, then the population could easily have more than doubled every 25 years.
Now, I personally think that the children of Israel went to
Egypt only 215 years. I worked that out at one time. I forget what it would take, but I think their population would have to have about three kids by the time they were 21 years old, or something like that.
I don't remember the exact numbers. You can work
those things out yourself. But the truth is, it could happen.
You might say, well, that's
like reproducing like rabbits. But actually, it says in Exodus 1 that the people multiplied greatly and that God blessed them, and that in all likelihood, they didn't have as many miscarriages as the average, and infant mortalities, and so forth, so that the population did grow that fast. And it's not impossible.
It's remarkable, but it's not impossible for the
population to grow that much. Another problem that people have suggested is that if there were only two midwives serving the Israelites in Egypt, as we read about in chapter 1 of Exodus, at the time when Moses was born, which would be just about 100 years before this, how did two midwives take care of so many families? And the answer to that would certainly be that the two midwives were more like heads of the midwife guild. They were not the only two women serving the community.
Even if you reduce the number to a thousand people, you'd probably need more than two midwives to serve them. But the two midwives, Shepherd and Pua, who are named in Exodus chapter 1, probably were just the heads of midwife groups, overseers of the midwife guilds, and there's no reason to believe there'd be only two midwives working. Some people think that it'd be difficult to imagine two or three million people crossing the Red Sea in one night.
I mean, imagine a column of people, three million people, crossing
the Red Sea. Many miles long, with children and cattle and so forth, getting to cross the sea in a single evening. They say it would take way too long.
But of course, that assumption
assumes that they're marching in a narrow column, as if they were following some kind of a road into the sea. They didn't make roads into seas in those days. They were just spread out along the shore of the sea.
They could have been spread out miles wide. Crossing
the sea could have been much more like an invading army that doesn't follow a narrow column. They just spread out wide, and there could have been miles wide advance across the sea.
We don't know how wide the corridor was that God made. But it's, of course, if
you speculate that it could have been very wide, but since there's not a strict limit on how wide that column could be, you could get everyone across easily in a short period of time, because they wouldn't have to be marching single file or in a narrow road. So these objections often are not very realistic objections.
Another objection that's often
raised is how could that desert sustain so many people? To my mind, that's a very foolish question because it suggests that they had to be sustained by the natural resources in the desert, and the Bible makes it very clear they're not sustained by the natural resources in the desert. There wasn't food out there in the desert. That's one of the points that the scripture makes.
And so God sent them manna every day, and sometimes quails, and
he provided water from supernatural sources like rocks. And so the desert didn't have to sustain them. God sustained them.
And I guess the critics who bring this up, and they
always do, I mean, a lot of the commentators bring up, well, the number 600,000 for the men over 20 seems a little large because we don't know how the desert could sustain that many people. The desert is a harsh environment, that's for sure. But if it could sustain one family, it can sustain 600,000 families if God's doing all the feeding and providing.
I mean, the weather might be hard on people. It's pretty hot down there and dry, but like said, there are people who live in those deserts, and if one family could survive it, then it's survivable by human beings. It might have been uncomfortable, and maybe not even as uncomfortable as it would be today, because many have said that there's evidence that there was much more rain in that region than there is these days.
This is, we're talking
about 2,500 years ago, and weather patterns change in that region over time. And so some feel that it was more lush than it is now, anyway, and that it rained more, and that it wasn't at all as severe as it is now. But whether it was or not, the desert did not have to provide the food.
God provided the food and the water for the people.
One of the real problems, though, with the large number is that when the number of the firstborn, when the census is taken of the firstborn of the sons of Israel, there's only 22,000 firstborn. Now, if we've got 600,000 heads of family, or just 600,000 adult males, you'd expect a certain percentage of those to be firstborns.
Let's say a family, let's
say the average family had six kids. Well, then every sixth man should be a firstborn of his family. If a family had 10 kids, it's a pretty big average, but then every 10th man would be a firstborn.
But the number 22,000 when compared to 600,000 is like one firstborn
for every 27 men, which doesn't seem very realistic. It just seems that, well, you can't really imagine that the average family had 27 children. Now, there's different ways that that has been sought to be resolved, and we will talk about that when we get to the proper chapter about that.
But there are ways that that can be solved. But it is on the surface
a problem that there'd only be 22,000 firstborn when there are said to be 600,000 men. But there are at least four different solutions that have been offered for that, some more likely than not to be the correct one.
But I won't take the time now to answer them,
because we'll do that when we come to the proper place in the book of Numbers. One question that has been raised by critics is, if there were two or three million people in the desert, where are all the graves? You should find an awful lot of dead people out there. But that's not realistic either.
These people didn't all die at once or in one place.
These people were wandering around, dying over a period of 40 years in different geographical areas. You can easily scatter millions of bodies out over that whole desert.
They didn't
have mass graveyards, and they didn't, because they were in motion so much, they probably buried people in rather shallow graves. And in a shallow grave, you can't bury people in. So, if predators, or carrion eaters, jackals and hyenas and such, as well as carrion birds, can often get a hold of them, especially if the wind blows the sand off them and they are partly exposed.
Many times, we're talking about 2500 years ago, there have been lots
of predators and carrion eating birds and so forth, to go picking up their bones. And even if a lot of them remained intact, it's very possible that they are covered by deep sand by now. I mean, sand storms and stuff, there could be sand dunes on top of some of these bodies.
But the point is that they didn't all die in one spot. They were spread over
a rather large region. And we don't actually find lots of dead bodies from any society that old.
It's just, you just don't find them because they don't stay intact. There's ways in which
those bones get scattered around by animals and such, or just get buried under deep earth that's moved over the centuries. One of the problems that actually does seem a little problematic, even to me, is that there are some statements that found as if Israel was a small nation.
In Exodus 23, for
example, when God is telling the Israelites that he's going to take them into the land and conquer the Canaanites, he says in verse 29, I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. Little by little, I will drive them out from you until you have increased and you inherit the land. Now, if there were two or three million of them, why would it be difficult for them to occupy a land that's like 180 miles from end to end? Why would there be the danger of beasts taking over the land if they were so numerous? And there's also, in Deuteronomy 7.7, God makes reference to them being small in number.
Deuteronomy 7.7, God said, The Lord did not set his love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples. These statements of them being the smallest or the least of the peoples, or needing time to fill the land and so their conquest would be gradual, has led many people to believe that they were really quite a small company. We should understand that 600,000 men is some kind of a misprint or some kind of a misunderstanding.
That's not the really right number for it. However,
these statements are not really that problematic. When it says God set his love on them, even when they were the least of the people, when did God set his love on them? Back in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
They weren't a big nation then. They were just a clan,
a small family. But he basically made his commitments to them when it was just Abraham and a few family members.
That's not a reference to the size of the nation when they left Egypt.
Likewise, occupying Canaan a little at a time doesn't necessarily mean that it would be spread out over centuries or decades. It took them perhaps several years anyway to conquer Canaan and to spread out through it.
Even though there were so many of them, they didn't just move in
and spread out throughout the whole land. So much of the land was unoccupied by them until they finally conquered all the nations there. There would be even a million people in one spot, in one city.
It is not unheard of. There have been excavations of, for example,
Ebla, a city from Abraham's time or earlier in that region that had a quarter of a million people in one city. There are other cities that they have uncovered that had half a million or a million people in them too from that era.
So if you've got a million people
crammed into one city, that means there is still a lot of land around there not occupied. People often do like to live in cities because they have security and so forth. So spreading out to fill the land would be something that would happen gradually for them.
It doesn't
mean that they were real small, but it couldn't have been two or three million people. Certainly they could have been. Other problems in the book of Numbers have to do with harmonizing the stories in Numbers with information on the same stories, the parallels in Deuteronomy.
Once in a while there is a little bit of a difference there. Harmonizing those, we will have to deal with at their proper places. When we come to the particular cases, we'll look at that.
We'll see what Deuteronomy says as it recalls the same story. Sometimes
the information is a bit different. But in my opinion, it's sort of like the differences in the Gospels.
They are supplementary. I do believe that they can be harmonized. I won't
deny that they do present some difficulties of harmonization, just like some of the Gospels accounts do.
Before we're done here in this introduction, I want to talk about some of
the New Testament lessons that are brought out of the book of Numbers. The first of which I think is not explicit in the New Testament, but I think it's implicit, is that the wilderness wandering of Israel in Numbers has sort of a parallel of sorts in Jesus being tempted forty days in the wilderness. The reason that the Israelites had to wander forty years was because the spies had spent forty days spying out the land of Canaan, and they brought back a bad report.
God said, for every day that your spies were in the wilderness, I'm going
to give you a year of wandering. Jesus, when he was born, was born, I believe, to be the antitype of Israel. He was to be the true Israel.
Therefore, I think the New Testament
writers saw him that way. That is why Matthew quotes Hosea 11.1, when Jesus as a baby is brought to Egypt and then out of Egypt. Matthew, in chapter 2, quotes Hosea 11.1, that says, Out of Egypt I call my son.
A statement which in Hosea is really about Israel. It's really
about the Exodus. It's not really a prophecy about the Messiah at all.
In Hosea 11.1, it's
a recollection, not a prophecy. It's not predicting the Messiah. It's just saying, in fact, when Israel was young, I loved him and I called my son out of Egypt.
Meaning, in the Exodus,
it's a historical remembrance, not a prophecy. Yet Matthew sees it as if it's predicting something fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Why? Because he sees Jesus as the antitype of Israel.
Israel is the type. Christ is the antitype. In Israel's infancy, God called them
out of Egypt.
In Christ's infancy, he also came out of Egypt, back into the Promised
Land after his family had been exiled in Egypt for a short time. But at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus passed through the waters of baptism, which Paul likens to passing through the Red Sea. Then Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, being tested.
Now the Israelites
passed through the Red Sea and spent 40 years in the wilderness. Jesus couldn't afford 40 years in order to fulfill the antitype, but just as God gave the Jews 40 years for the 40 days, it would appear that the 40 days of Jesus in the wilderness correspond to the 40 years of Israel in the wilderness. One thing that makes it seem the more so is that whenever the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness and he quoted scripture to refute Satan, he quoted from Deuteronomy passages that are descriptive of Israel in the wilderness, as if that was relevant to him.
At least he found relevance to what God had said to the children
of Israel in the wilderness, relevance to his own case and the temptations he was facing there in the wilderness. So although it's not explicitly pointed out in the New Testament, I believe that Jesus' 40 days of temptation in the wilderness correspond to the 40 years of testing of Israel in the wilderness here in the book of Numbers. Now the whole book of Numbers is said to be a type of the Christian life by Paul.
We've
seen that passage when we were looking at some of the other earlier material in the Pentateuch, it really cannot hurt to look at those verses that are relevant again in 1 Corinthians 10. We can start earlier. In verse 1 it mentions our fathers who passed through the Red Sea in the Exodus.
He says in verse 2, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea.
He doesn't have to use the word baptized. He uses the word baptized here in order to point out that their experience was parallel to ours.
What he's actually getting at writing
to the Corinthians is that the children of Israel, although they were saved, in other words, like we're saved, they were baptized like we've been baptized. They have experienced things that correspond to our experience. Even though that was true, they fell to idolatry and immorality and things like that and they were judged.
And what Paul is arguing here
is that the Corinthians need to be aware of immorality and idolatry and those things too or else they too who have been baptized and saved and so forth could be lost. This is certainly what Paul is arguing. In fact, he has anticipated this argument in the previous verse at the end of chapter 9. At the end of chapter 9, verse 27, he has said, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
I'm a Christian. I've served God, but I could become disqualified.
And he gives in chapter 10 and there's no chapter division in Paul's letter when he wrote it.
He goes directly from that statement. Although I have preached to others, I could
become disqualified. He says, remember, that was true of so many of our ancestors.
They
were saved in the Exodus. They were baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit. They, he says, ate the same spiritual food just as we eat of Christ.
They ate manna. They drank
the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them. The rock was Christ.
So they drank from the living water that Christ gave them just like we do.
But he says, but with most of them, God was not well pleased for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. That's why we can't find their bodies.
They're scattered. They're not
all in one place. Now, these things became our types, the Greek says, to pass to point types to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted and do not become idolaters as some of them.
As it is written, the people sat down to eat and
drink and rose up to play. Now that particular quote is not from Numbers, but from Exodus. But the general things that Paul is talking about here are summarized in Numbers.
There
is a summary of the things recorded in the book of Numbers. Nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did. And in one day, twenty-three thousand fell.
Nor let us
as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents. Nor murmur as some of them also murmured and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, all these things happened to them as types and they were written for our admonition on whom the ends of the ages have come.
And
the lesson is, therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. That is the lesson of the book of Numbers in the New Testament for us is that they were saved like we are saved. They fell as we can fall.
They did not expect to fall and we do not expect
to fall, but we need to take heed if we think that we stand. It is possible. There but for the grace of God go any of us.
We could all fall if they could fall. Now, some might say,
well, that is not really true of us because we have the new covenant. We have Christ living within us.
We have the Holy Spirit. They did not have that. And we have the promise
of Jesus that we are his sheep and no one can pluck us out of his hand.
We do in fact
have those promises, but we also have these warnings. If anyone thinks he stand, let him take heed lest he fall. I do think that we have more resources available to us and therefore less excuse for falling than they had.
But even if we have less excuse, we do not have
less danger. The devil attacks us. The devil tests us just as he did them.
And Paul is
very much aware that the Corinthians, Christian Corinthians, they are in danger. There is the temptation of idolatry. There is the temptation of morality around them.
And he says, we need
to take these people as an example so we do not make their mistakes. So that is the New Testament application of the book of Numbers by Paul in 1 Corinthians. We also have, I believe, the doctrine of justification by faith.
We could say by grace through faith, as Paul puts
it. And that is in Jesus' invoking of the image of the serpent on the pole, because he is talking to Nicodemus about being born again. Now, Nicodemus was a man who kept the law.
He was a Pharisee. And yet keeping the law did not cause him to be born again. He
was not saved by keeping the law.
And he asked, how is it that a person can be born
again? And Jesus' answer to him in John 3, 14 and 15 is, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Certainly, believing in Christ is given as the cause for a person having eternal life and not perishing. This is justification through faith.
And it is by grace, because it does not involve working. It involves God's free
gift. Now, Jesus said this was foreshadowed in Numbers when Moses raised up the serpent.
You remember that children of Israel had been murmuring and made God mad again. And he sent out venomous snakes among them that bit them and they were dying. And then Moses was shown that if he made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, that whoever looked at it would be healed of the snake bite.
They didn't deserve to be healed. It was just the grace of God.
He would heal them if they would just look at the serpent.
And Jesus said that's like
believing in the Son of God. As the serpent was raised up, so the Son of Man is raised up. And whoever believes in him, just like everyone who looked at the serpent, will be saved.
And so certainly that is a picture Jesus himself authorizes us to see. That is
a picture of being saved, born again through faith and by grace. And the writer of Hebrews, as we saw, urges us to beware, based on the story in Numbers, of failing to enter into God's rest.
This could be seen as perhaps the same thing as
the warning not to fall away, which Paul gave. Remember in 1 Corinthians 10, 12, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. So the writer of Hebrews also has more to say than any other writer in the New Testament about the danger of falling away.
It's the
same concern Paul expressed, but with more incentives and more exhortations to beware in Hebrews than elsewhere. And we saw in Hebrews 3.19, so we see they could not enter because of unbelief, referring to the 13th chapter of Numbers. And then chapter 4, verse 1. Therefore, since the promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear, lest any of you seem to have come short of it.
If we fail to come into his rest. Now, if coming into God's rest
is just seen as going to heaven, and some people think that that's how it should be understood, then this is just another warning that we should make sure we don't fall away, lest we fail to enter heaven, lest we fail to enter into God's rest. The assumption is that his readers are on their way there, that they are saved.
In fact, he calls them
holy brethren in verse 1 of Hebrews 3.1. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling. He sees them as true Christians, but he says we need to beware, lest we fall short of entering his rest. Now, if his rest means heaven, then he's saying, even though you are true Christians, there's the possibility that you will not enter heaven, just like these people did not enter the promised land.
Some people think that God's rest in Hebrews is not a reference
to heaven, but is a reference to a spiritual place of resting in Christ, resting in the finished work of Christ, as opposed to striving through law and works to be saved. And therefore, he would be, if that's true, saying that you need to come to the place where you're free from all your legalism and free from all your works orientation to the place where you're just resting in what Christ has done. And you need to make sure you don't fail to come into that rest.
It's possible that that is what he means also. In any case, he
makes it very clear that there is a rest. There is a state of rest, whether it's in this life, a spiritual plane you achieve by just resting in God and trusting in him for everything or whether he's referring to heaven at the end.
It doesn't matter. Both are certainly
the inheritance of the believer. And I'm sure that both of them are situations that one must be careful not to come short of.
We need to make sure we press in and we don't fall
back. And that's what the New Testament writers do with the book of Numbers. They make it a warning to us.
Now, in the handout I've given you, there's a kind of a detailed outline
of the book of Numbers. I don't want to go over all those details with you now. Those are for your benefit.
You can deal with them on your own. But just to notice that I've divided
the book into three sections. Now, some divided a little differently because not all commentators, not all individuals agree exactly where the 38 years falls in.
You clearly have the first
generation up to say, up to chapter 14 probably. That's when they turn from Kadesh Barnea or at least that's where they fall. They may not leave Kadesh Barnea at that point, but they are doomed at that point.
And that is the first generation. By the time you get
to either chapter 20 or 22, depending on different people's opinions, you've come to the second generation. You're actually in the 40th year.
And that first generation has died off. So
somewhere in between chapters 15 or chapter 14 and chapter 20, perhaps, is the main division between the two generations. I've got chapter 1 through chapter 10, verse 10, which involves the old generation, but that doesn't mean they die off at that point.
But rather, it
involves them as opposed to the parts involving the new generation later on. This section is the preparations for the departure from Sinai. I've got it broken down pretty much by geography rather than the passage of one generation and the arising of another.
The
first ten chapters, or most of ten chapters, is about preparations to leave Mount Sinai. They were camped there for over a year. And really, the first ten chapters cover about nineteen days.
There's the seven days of one set of ceremonies, and then there's twelve
days of gifts that are brought by the twelve tribes in successive days. So we have that length of time covered in those chapters. Then they actually leave Mount Sinai and they start to wander.
So chapter 10, verse 11 through chapter 21, really, is the transition
as they journey from Sinai to the plains of Moab. And then in chapter 22 through 36, they are at the plains of Moab, and that's now the new generation. The generation, of course, didn't just change over in one particular year.
It's just over a course of thirty-eight
years. Individuals died, and younger ones were born, and so forth. But at the end of the book of Numbers, they took a census again and found that the number was almost the same as before, a little lower.
It dipped a little bit from the amount that had come out of Egypt,
but it was still very much, very close to the same amount of people. So I think there were just a couple thousand different in number. So they actually, their numbers diminished just a little bit during those thirty-eight years, but at the end they have hopefully a generation that has learned their lesson and are ready to go in and take the land.
That leaves only the book of Deuteronomy, then, for Moses to encourage them through his sermons to not be fearful and to go in and remind them of the things God told them to do when they get there. So that's the outline of the book. I have all the small details in there too, but that's for you to, if you want to look at those on your own, if that's helpful to you.
So we'll take a break now and we'll come back and begin Numbers chapter
1.

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