What's NUMBERS about?

Summary

The book of Numbers is so called because after the people have received the Ten Commandments and God has come to live with them at the end of the Book of Exodus and have received the details of how priests do sacrifices in the Book of Leviticus, the people have everything they need to claim the land God promised them. In order to prepare for the invasion of the land, the people have to be counted to ensure there are enough of them, and that counting, at the start of this book, gives it its name.

The story of how they prepared to enter the land is a story of failure. At first the people “grumble” which is to say they don’t trust God to deliver on God’s promise and are reluctant to continue the journey. Later, when they come to the border, they are frightened, again because they don’t trust God to use God’s power to care for them. The result of this lack of trust is that enormous numbers die. These deaths are attributed to God as if God were annoyed, but the real meaning is that when we lose trust in God’s care for us, there is nothing left to live for except selfishness and that brings death to us and others. Although it takes an entire generation to replace those who died, God does not give up on the people and they do finally come to the edge of the land.

How Numbers is important for us

One way of understanding this book is that it contrasts two different attitudes toward God’s care for us. The first generation did not trust and so died because their vision was focused on their own safety and on themselves and their limited abilities. The second half of the book is focused on the succeeding generation who did trust in God’s love and not their own limited strength and so they were strong enough to enter the land. Our promised land may be our own fulfillment in maturity as individuals or the full future of humanity. Those are both possible if we allow God’s loving power to work through us, and unlikely to happen if we substitute self-centredness in place of God’s love.