BAMIDBAR

IN THE WILDERNESS

7 And they shall keep his charge, and the charge of the whole congregation before the tabernacle of the congregation, to do the service of the tabernacle.

At a blast from the two silver trumpets by the sons of Aaron at the door of the tabernacle, the east camp broke up and set forward. Then the priests to whom the work had been allotted, took down the tabernacle and the pillars and the courts with their sockets, and went forward with the wagons, leaving the Kohathites behind, in charge of the holy vessels and furniture of the sanctuary. Then at a second alarm of the trumpets, the camp of Reuben, on the south, broke up and fell in behind the priests with the wagons. Then the Kohathites marched, bearing the holy vessels on their shoulders. Then the west camp, the camp of Ephraim broke up, and marched behind the Kohathites, and after them, the north camp, the camp of Dan, which formed the rear of the lengthy procession.

On arriving at a new site, the camps pitched in the same order. The host of Judah, at the head of the procession, came to a halt first, and put up their tents. The wagons behind them stopped at the same time, and the priests in charge got out the pillars and court hangings, and the boards and bars of the tabernacle, and put up the empty structure in readiness to receive the altars and holy vessels on the arrival of the Kohathites in the rear. Then the host of the Reubenites turned aside to the right, and formed their camp at the due distance; then the Kohathites came up, and found the tabernacle ready to receive the ark and the holy vessels. Then the host of Ephraim formed camp on the ground where they stood, and the host of Dan behind them defiled to the left and went forward to their camping ground on the north of the tabernacle.

It was all done in beautiful order and without hitch. It was a most wise plan for avoiding confusion in the handling of such a mass of people. But it was also an illustration of the truth stated by Paul when he said, "God in not the author of confusion, but of peace", and in this character it may be taken as a foreshadowing of the perfect order that will characterize the work of God in the age of glory. How much of the interest and impressiveness of all public functions (from the review of an army, to the performances of a trained orchestra in the presence of royalty), depends upon order.

How abortive is a mere mob, even of respectable people. How great is the difference between a state ceremony and the rush of a rabble in the street. The beauty of order requires the surrender of some amount of individual liberty which may be irksome to mere mortals, especially to lawless mortals, of such an age as this, when the spirit of democratic insubordination is rampant. But to the multitude "redeemed from among men" because of the subjection of their will to the will of God, it will be as much a joy to respond to the organizing requirements of the Spirit of God as it is for the physical body now to respond to the lightning-like volitions of the brain.

The "army of heaven" is not a mob (Dan. 4:35). The "multitude of the heavenly host" did not sing on the plains of Bethlehem without concert and leadership (Luke 2:13). Even the simultaneous flight of a flock of migratory birds under leadership (one of the most interesting sights in nature)--is a divine work in its way--which does not mean the sacrifice of the wills of the individual birds, but their voluntary accommodation to a collective necessity in which they find pleasure.

So the movements of the saints in the perfect state to which probation is steadily taking them forward will have many glorious co-operations, in which the perfect order, which is "heaven's first law", will be the highest delight of myriads of co-operative wills. They will rejoice in the marshallings and movements of the host of the Lord as all true Israelites did in the movements of the camps during their march under Moses to the promised land

Law of Moses Ch 33

39 All that were numbered of the Levites, which Moses and Aaron numbered at the commandment of Yahweh, throughout their families, all the males from a month old and upward, were 22 000.

The discrepancy between the statement of the number of the Levites to be taken for the divine service in the place of the first-born of Israel (first given in Num. 3:22–34, as 22,300, in the adding of the details—Gershonites, 7,500; Kohathites, 8,600; Merarites, 6,200; total, 22,300; and then given in verse 39 as a total of 22,000)—is probably due to a copying error in the details.

That the total is the correct number is shown by verse 46, where the excess of the first-borns over the Levites is given at 273—the exact difference between the total of the first-borns and the total of the Levites.

The copying of Hebrew is very liable to numerical errors, because numbers were represented by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and several of these letters so closely resemble each other that a little decay in the ink or substance of a manuscript might easily lead one number to be taken for another.

The difference in form between the third and the sixth letter of the Hebrew is very slight. The obliteration of the bottom stroke from gimmel would convert it into a wav, and thus cause 3 to be taken for 6. If this happened in the number of the Kohathites (given at 8,600) the difference between that and 8,300 would be explained, and the discrepancy of 300, to which you call attention, accounted for.

The Christadelphian, June 1898.

Number of the Levites

That the separate numbers, in Num. 3:14–39, exceed the total by 300, is only to be explained on the supposition that something has happened to one of the three minor numbers in the course of transcription.

That the sum total is right, seems proved by the fact that in verse 43 all the first-born males of the Israelites are reckoned 22,273, which in verse 46 are said to be just 273 more than the Levites; consequently the true number of the Levites must have been 22,000, as stated in the sum total.

For if the Levites had been 22,300, instead of the Israelites exceeding the Levites by 273, the Levites would have exceeded the Israelites by 27. The only possibility of mistranscription appears to lie in the number of the Gershonites, where the Hebrew letter for 200 might easily be mistaken for 500; for in the more ancient Hebrew they are about as near alike as two peas, being both the same length and the same shape, with only a slight difference in the sloping and rounding of the letter that strongly suggest the ease with which one numeral letter might be taken for the other.

In such a case the original number of the Gershonites may have been 7,200 instead of 7,500.

The Christadelphian, Mar 1888