Even if you aren’t a literal descendant of Aaron this chapter is about you. If you are joined to the High Priest Messiah Yeshua, you are joined, in a spiritual sense to the priestly Levites. Numbers 3 tells you how.
Tag: Numbers
Numbers 1 told us the names of the leaders of the tribes of Israel and the numbers of their fighting men. Numbers 2 places them in rank and shows us how they were strategically camped around the Tabernacle and in what order they are to move in case of danger or battle. The names of these men not only shows us how the Messiah fights His own battle but how God’s army is going to fight His battle.
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Numbers 1:17-54: From freedom to war
The lists of numbers in the book of Numbers can be somewhat overwhelming. The first chapters are talking about how they are to count and assemble an army, not the entire community. We don’t pay attention to Numbers 1 because it is “just a bunch of names and a bunch of numbers,” but these were real men who had to be ready to fight in a real war (Num. 1:17-54).
Numbers 1 foretells Yeshua’s burden, the burden He tried to give up three times in the garden before His crucifixion (Matt. 26:39–44). That message is embedded in the meanings of the names of the tribes and clans, and that message becomes clear when the meanings are read together.
The book of Numbers is more than just a collection of long lists of numbers of people in the tribes and families of Israel and of places where the people camped for 40 years. It shows us how God prepares His people then and now to move forward into the tasks He has for them. Numbers contains lessons of character refinement of a people.
In the closing chapters of the book of Numbers, among a discussion of land grants to the tribes of Israel we read of a justice-and-mercy system for murderers that prophetically links ransom of the accidentally guilty to the death of the high priest.
Why is it that God specifically told Moses to write down these places? We may not have a complete picture of it but God did not ask Moses to write this down just for the sake of history. There’s a bigger picture to be found in the names of these places that Moses records and we endeavor to discover God’s picture.