Numbers 1–4: Census & Camps

Read the Bible in 2023 ◊ Week 33: Monday

Then Yahweh spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying,

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“Take a census of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ households, according to the number of names, every male, head by head from twenty years old and upward, whoever is able to go out to war in Israel, you and Aaron shall number them by their armies.”

Numbers 1:1–3 LSB

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Monday’s Bible reading is Numbers 1–4. Exodus 1–18 tells of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from Pharaoh and their travels on to the wilderness of Sinai. Once there, the rest of Exodus and the book of Leviticus record Moses’ receiving of the Ten Commandments and the Law from the Lord as well as the events during their sojourn there. Numbers is the story of the wandering of Israel in the wilderness. Gleason Archer introduces the book:

“The Hebrew title for this book is B^emidbār (in the wilderness of), taken from the first verse: “And Jehovah spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai” (ASV). The LXX [Septuagint] labels it Arithmoi, or Numbers, because of the prominence of census figures in this book. And yet the Hebrew title is quite appropriate to its general theme: Israel under God’s training in the wilderness. Historical narrative occupies a larger proportion of this book than is the case in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, and the period of years involved is far greater (forty years of discipline) than in the other books of the Pentateuch (excluding Genesis).

“The spiritual lesson enforced throughout the book is that God’s people can move forward only so far as they trust His promises and lean upon His strength….The purpose of the census prior to the failure at Kadesh (Num 1–4) and of the census of the later generation at the plains of Moab (Num 26) was to show that they were not kept out of Canaan by their insufficient numbers. It was not the size of their army that mattered, but only the size of their faith.”¹

One of the interesting things in these opening chapters is the arrangement of the tribes of Israel around the Tabernacle and the assignment of duties to the branches of the tribe of Levi. The Levites are in red in the table. Moses, and the priests—Aaron and his sons—are on the east side of the Tabernacle where the entrance was located.

God commands the tribes of Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun to camp to the east of the Tabernacle. Reuben, Simeon, and Gad are to the south; Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin are to the west; and Dan, Asher, and Naphtali are to the north. I’ve looked at several diagrams. One had the leader in the center, while another put the leader at the end of each side in the order in which they are named in Scripture. For this table I followed the order in which the tribes are named.

With the exception of Moses, and Aaron and his sons, the descendants of Levi’s three sons, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, were commanded by God to camp around the immediate circumference of the Tabernacle to its north, south, and west. God commanded Moses, and Aaron and his sons to camp in front of the entrance of the Tabernacle. God had chosen Moses to be the leader of the Israelites, and throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, Moses is the one to whom God speaks regarding His people.² God had chosen Aaron and his sons to be designated as priests with the responsibility of the Tabernacle.

Now those who were to camp before the tabernacle eastward, before the tent of meeting toward the sunrise, are Moses and Aaron and his sons, keeping the responsibility of the sanctuary for the responsibility of the sons of Israel; but the outsider coming near was to be put to death.

Numbers 3:38 LSB

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Below is a table showing the location of the camps of the descendants of the twelve sons of Israel (Jacob). In the above illustration the entrance of the Tabernacle on the east is oriented to the bottom, rather than to the right as we orient our maps. I followed the same orientation for the table. The tribe designated as leader of its side is in blue letters. The Levites are in red.

THE ENCAMPMENT OF ISRAEL
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	Ephraim	Manessah	Benjamin
Gad				Dan
		Gershon
Simeon		Kohath—–Tabernacle—–Merari		Asher
		Moses/Aaron
Reuben				Naphtali
	Zebulun	Issachar	Judah
		*EAST*

You may have noticed that rather than twelve tribes of Israel, there are thirteen tribes named: the tribe of Levi, that surrounds and is closest to the Tabernacle and then twelve other tribes surrounding the Levites. If you look back at Genesis 48, when Jacob is in his final illness Joseph brings his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to Jacob. Jacob adopts them as his own sons and gives the birthright and blessing of Reuben, his first-born, to Joseph’s younger son, Ephraim. Derek Kidner comments:

“This declaration of adoption (cf. 16b) left its lasting mark on the structure of Israel, in which Ephraim inherited the headship of the whole twelve, forfeited by Reuben (cf:49:4) 1 Chronicles 5: 1,2 states the position: ‘[Reuben’s] birthright was given to the sons of Joseph…; though Judah became strong among his brothers and a prince was from him, yet the birthright belonged to Joseph.’”³

This is why there’s no tribe of Joseph. The descendants of his sons became two tribal groups. In Scripture Manasseh is frequently referred to as the half-tribe of Manasseh (i.e., Joshua 21:1–7).

Thus the sons of Israel did; according to all that Yahweh commanded Moses, so they camped by their standards, and so they set out, every one by his family according to his father’s household.

Numbers 2:54 LSB

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Silvesterzug Laterne: Bk muc. (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Tentenkampen van de twaalf stammen van Israël opgesteld rondom het tabernakel Campement des XII Tribus, et celui des Levites tout autour du Tabernacle (titel op object); Tented camps of the twelve tribes of Israel set up around the tabernacle Camp of the XII Tribes, and that of the Levites all around the Tabernacle (title by object): 1905. Public Domain. Letters designation of the tribes erased. It appeared that the letters were assigned placing the lead tribe in the middle of each side, but no key to the diaram was included.
¹Gleason L. Archer, Jr., “Leviticus and Numbers,” A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Moody Press, Chicago IL: 1974) 243–244, 245.
²Moses is the only one to whom God spoke face to face (Exodus 33:11, Deuteronomy 34:10).
³Derek Kidner, Genesis (Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove IL: 1967) 213.

I’m using Michael Coley’s Bible reading plan (one page PDF to print) to read through the Bible in 2023. Each day my posts are on different books because he divides Bible readings into seven categories, one for each day of the week: Epistles, The Law, History, Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy and Gospels. There’s more information on his plan and other ones at Read the Bible in 2023.