Numbers may not be top of your list if you are looking for inspiration but it would be a mistake to overlook it. If ‘all scripture is inspired by God’ (2 Tim 3:16 NRSV) then Numbers may have something special to offer about Community and Relationships.
It tells of a Community on a Journey from Slavery to Freedom but it is more than that and the title doesn’t help. ‘Numbers’ is simply the title given by the translators, presumably because it begins with a census, but is is not about ‘numbers‘ and certainly not statistics. It is about people, and people on a journey. The Hebrew title , ‘In the Wilderness’, is more apt because that is a journey we are all familiar with. ‘Wilderness’ may not be the whole of life but it is a significant experience for most communities at some point or other. The details may vary but the similarities are remarkable. Their story is our story. So as you read, reflect and pray, think of it as Steps on the Journey of Life.
The opening chapters read almost like a shopping list of not very meaningful items but they are the key to the community, the fairly natural response of people to the problems they encounter, the highs and lows of the leadership and (in too many cases) learning to accept and adapt to the inevitable. So who are they and where are they coming from?
Popularly known as ‘the Israelites’, their tribal names define them as descendants of Jacob, but Jacob was anything up to 500 years earlier. Over time Joseph’s privileged position at the court was history, and with a new ruler ‘who did not know Joseph‘ his descendants found themselves slaves who escaped under Moses.
What we have when we get to Numbers is a mixed community, several hundred if not thousands (the figures are suspect because the wilderness could never have supported a community of that size), escaping from persecution and setting off on an unknown journey. Anything, even wilderness, is better than torture, but it wasn’t long before the thrill of escape and freedom gave way to frustration and anxiety not satisfied by wandering.
‘The back drop is the journey from Sinai to the Promised Land. Despite much detail in Numbers 33 it is no longer possible to be sure of the precise route though there is no reason to doubt the sorties in the territory of Edom, Arad, Moab, the Amorites and Midian or Moses’s glimpse of the ‘Promised Land’ in chapter 27.