This is a difficult, laborious chapter. There are lots of hard-to-pronounce names — 40, 42 or 43 depending on the count. Yet the name of each encampment carries important teachings from what happened at each site and the meaning of the names themselves.
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Skeptics like to poke fun at this story because of the talking donkey. Yet sometimes, our way is so set upon evil that a talking donkey doesn’t even phase us and give us pause to turn away from our direction.
Balaam wasn’t ignorant of the identity of the Creator God. He knew YHWH by name, and Balak, the king of Moab knew of Him too. If he knew that, then he knew that God had the power to make a donkey talk. Balaam didn’t fully understand the error of his way until one of the most powerful angels in God’s hosts, the Angel of the Lord, confronts him with a sword in his hand.
We will look at this chapter carefully. The events of this chapter occur near the end 40 year wilderness exile. After nearly 40 years, the people still complain about being removed from Egypt and “dying in the wilderness.”
Not only did the people believe the “evil” report, they actually wanted to stone the two spies who brought back the faithful report.
Numbers 12 shows us the consequences of Miriam and Aaron’s jealously of God’s special relationship with Moses. Since they could not openly complained about God’s special treatment of Moses, they struck out against Moses’s by attacking his Cushite wife. Numbers 13 shows us the story of the first spies who went out into the land of Israel to scout out the land. God told Moses to call out one leader from each tribe to be the spies of the land.
This chapter gives us an example of unity and diversity. Each tribe had its function in regards to the dedication of the temple but each tribe was required to bring the exact same number of items in a set pattern over the course of 12 days. Within the tribe of Levi, each family had their functions and received different gifts to fulfill that function. Their individual functions did not dilute their unity as the people of Israel. All the tribes had to participate to accomplish the dedication of the altar.
This chapter is one of those chapters we read and question the modern day relevance. There’s lots of accounting in this chapter, giving an account of individual tribal offerings and adding them up overall. It also gives the names of individual tribal leaders we don’t know.
The Exodus 18 is out of sequence. God has a reason for placing Jethro’s counsel at this point in the narrative, even though Jethro’s arrival was well after God gave Moses the 10 commandments and the people’s rebellions with the Golden Calf. In Exodus 19, Israel arrives at Mount Sinai and prepares to receive the 10.