“The Lord spoke to Moses “in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of of the land of Egypt, saying, “Take a census…” (Num 1:1-2)
I’ve been working my way through a new commentary on the book of Numbers by Peter Altmann, which has been really great thus far. A number of weeks ago I found myself jotting down some observations and notes in this space that I’ve finally found time to come back around to. And in the process I came across an old post sitting in my drafts on Numbers that I never published or did anything with. Much of it was based on a Jewish commentary I had worked through years ago from Rabbi Glenn.
As Altmann notes, on a narrative level Numbers chapter 1 picks up from Leviticus 10;16:1 and Exodus 40, following the group that leaves Sinai. In Numbers, God speaks in the desert within the tabernacle, not on the mountain, placing the tabernacle at the center of the story through its depiction of the centralization of this people in the desert. This places Numbers “along the way” and represents a qualitative difference to the method of Gods speaking.
Further, he exposits the notion of the census, which in the ancient world is present either in connection to military campaigns or to the raising of taxes or a labour force, often for a building project. In the case of Numbers the image being evoked is that of a sacred army on a campaign. In the case of Israel however it contains a theological purpoose that explicity acts and functions in opposition to the idea of Empire. Having left Egypt and finding the people “along the way,” the book intentionally connects the generation that exited Egypt at Sinai witth the generation after (the descendants of this group). The numbers act symbolically in a way that binds these two groupings together through a singular story. Those in chapter 1 die in the desert after their refusal to take the land, and those in the second is about how this story moves forward towards “the transformation of the community.” Altmann describes this as a liberated community becomming a sacral congregation on pilgrimage with the Divine royal tent (the tabernacle). Hence why, like the book of Leviticus, we find the imagery of the centralization of this community beginning with the organization of the camp around the tabernacle, with Judah being placed closest to the tent and the tents symbolic of the scattered nations being placed furthest away.
This positioning becomes important when the Tribes are named and given the symbolic nature of the 12, which we can see being creatively drawn out for a theological purpose of drawing readers towards the hopeful promise of transformation, which begins with Israel and flows out into the whole, all with the express interest in God’s defeat of the Empire, an image that in Israel’s story is made synonymous with the serpents seed of Genesis 1-4. The organization of the camp matches the building of the tabernacle, and the building of the tabernacle matches the narrative of Genesis 1-4. Even the census itself is divided into 12 parts, drawing the reader into the same imagery. As an aside, this becomes a stepping off point into the relevance of the Levites and the firstborn, which occupies prominant space in the early chapters.
For Rabbi Glenn, he sees Numbers as a travelogue. It is both about looking forward and looking back, which fits with Altmann’s connecting of the census with the bringing together of this generational gap “along the way” of this singular story. What I especially liked about how Glenn expresses this journey is the way he connects the liberative act of the Exodus with the necessary movement into the desert. This is a lengthy quote, but I love how it emphasizes the nature of this journey as one that reaches “beyond history” and makes the unseen seen in this concept of the spoken Word:
The Hebrew word midbar, wilderness, has the same root as the word dabar/davar, meaning “word” or “thing.” It has the same letters as medabber, “speaking.” It is in the wilderness that the Israelites hear revelation, the word or speaking of G-d.
Fundamental to Judaism is the belief that G-d cannot be seen. For every ancient faith but one, the gods were present in the phenomena of nature: the sun, the stars, the sky, the sea. They were visible; things seen. In Israel a revolutionary idea reached expression, that G-d was beyond nature: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars which you have set in place . . .The vast universe is no more than the work of G-d’s fingers. Everything we can see is not G-d but merely the work of G-d. Hence the repeated prohibitions in Judaism against making an image or icon. To Judaism, the idea that G-d is visible is idolatry. G-d is beyond the totality of things seen.
But how then can He be perceived? In Judaism for the first time revelation becomes a problem. For every other culture, revelation is self-evident. Where are the gods? All around us. In polytheism, the gods are close. In Judaism, G-d – vast beyond our imagining – would seem to be infinitely distant. The answer Judaism gave was beautiful and world-transforming. G-d who transcends nature is close, because He exists not in things seen, but in words heard…
In the great river lowlands where civilization began (the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile) the eye is captivated by the shifting scenes of nature; in cities by the works of man – art and architecture. Only in the emptiness of the wilderness is the eye subordinate to the ear. Only in the silence of the desert, can the sound beneath sound be heard: In Hebrew thought, Book and Desert are contingent upon one another. When G-d revealed himself to Moses and charged him with the task of freeing the Hebrews, terms such as ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ were not used. The idea of emancipation from bondage is expressed as “going on a three days’ journey into the desert, to sacrifice to G-d our Lord,” (Ex. 3: 19; 5:3) as if G-d could not be apprehended without this initial journey into the desert. (Jose Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots) Or as Edmond Jabes puts it: The word cannot dwell except in the silence of other words. To speak is, accordingly, to lean on a metaphor of the desert, a space of dust or ashes, where the triumphant word is offered in her unrestricted nudity. (Du Desert au Livre)The historian Eric Voegelin sees this as fundamental to the discovery by the Israelites of a completely new form of spirituality: If nothing had happened but a lucky escape from the range of Egyptian power, there only would have been a few more nomadic tribes roaming the border zone between the Fertile Crescent and the desert proper, eking out a meagre living with the aid of part-time agriculture. But the desert was only a station on the way, not the goal; for in the desert the tribes found their G-d. They entered into a covenant with him, and thereby became his people . . .
When we undertake the exodus and wander into the world, in order to found a new society elsewhere, we discover the world as the Desert. The flight leads nowhere, until we stop in order to find our bearings beyond the world. When the world has become Desert, man is at last in the solitude in which he can hear thunderingly the voice of the spirit that with its urgent whispering has already driven and rescued him from Sheol [the domain of death]. In the Desert G-d spoke to the leader and his tribes; in the desert, by listening to the voice, by accepting its offer, and by submitting to its command, they had at last reached life and became the people chosen by G-d…
The way to the Holy Land lies through the wilderness. It is there that the Israelites learned what it is to build a society that will be the anti-type of Egypt, not an empire built on power, but a society of individuals of equal dignity under the sovereignty of G-d. An impossible task? Certainly not an easy one. But to quote Eric Voegelin again: “What emerged from the alembic of the Desert was not a people like the Egyptians or Babylonians, that Canaanites or Philistines, the Hittites or Arameans, but a new genus of society, set off from the civilizations of the age by the Divine choice. It was a people that moved on the historical scene while living toward a goal beyond history. “
What’s so fascinating to me here is this image of a people delivered from the enslaving Powers in order to enter into the world as a liberated people. And yet this “liberation” is not described as being towards the politics of the world, it is defined as a journey into the desert where they are expressely in the world but also not of it. What’s interesting to point out is, as per Altmann’s mention of Stubbs in his commentary on chapter 2, the human counting of one’s people or army actually indicates a transgressing of God’s initial desire and authority and knowledge. This is so easy to miss, and yet its so crucial to how this story is being told. Even here in the centralization of a people set apart in the desert we find two parallel and opposing forces at work: to bind ones self to the politics of Empire (to be like the world) or to bind ones self to the voice of God. This tension carries forward into the whole of the story, following the building of a temple and the asking for a King, both things God does not desire and yet accomodates within an express commitment to a promise that reaches beyond the confines of history.
Which is of course what makes the theological signifance of the “numbers” in Numbers so fascinating. Just as we find in the creative rendering of genealogies in the NT, expressly rooted in the authors intentional connecting of the promise to Jesus through the messiness of the human story it must circumvent, we find the same creativity at play here in this early depiction of Israel connecting to the 12. The reason for the creativity needed to get to 12 is that the Levites aren’t counted: they are set apart. There are thirteen tribes that can be counted as 12 in various ways, and the reason for such counting is rooted in a people looking to locate God’s acting in their midst over and against the failure of the people. Which of course draws all the way towards a similar portrait regarding the 13th disciple in the Gospels. But here is what is important in this narrative: each tribe is seen as necessary to the idea of Israel as a whole. And as each Tribe is seen as necessary, so is the focal point of the promise as being for the whole of creation. This is what comes together at this central focal point of the tabernacle Here in this narrative we find a transition from a family to a people, thus bringing to the forefront the question “who belongs to God’s people.” This is answered: through kinship. This is what brings the mixed group that we now have into a singular whole, all centered around the Exodus. And yet this binding together, the creative rendering of the community of God as a portrait of a singular image of the Kingdom of God, is always carrying with it this existing tension between the exodus and the desert, the mountain and the golden calf. This is the same tension we wrestle with today as a people called to follow in the Way of Jesus towards the cross. Through the cross we find resurrection.
One last note to this end. Judah is obviously presented as the biggest tribe and the most relevant. In terms of the texts composition history, we are following the thread of the story of the winners (the only surviving tribe from the exile). Altmann notes the puzzle piece of the promise given to Judah (to make a people while they are still slaves) and the whole ensuing motif that comes out of the Exodus regarding Judah willingly suffering on behalf of his brother Benjamin (Gen 44), a reversal of this thematic interest in slave versus free which underscores the persisting image of the suffering servant. Here in the soil of this centralizing movement, God’s indwelling of creation within the tabernacle functions as a reminder of where this journey is going. The image of Judah and Benjamin. The image of Moses and Aaron. The image of the Levites whom are established as representative of and in place of the firstborn of the firstborn (Israel) when Israel is depicted as “fearing” speaking to God directly (as Moses fears speaking directly to the Pharoah of Egypt). This is where and how we move beyond history into the promise of new creation. This is how we learn what it is to name God not through the visible presence of idols, but through the revelation of a spoken Word that transcends the visible.
In the beginning God spoke to bring about creation
In the end God spoke to bring about the new creation in Jesus
In the middle God speaks in the wilderness to a people set apart to image the True revelation to a divided creation. To fear the gods we can see is to fear that which we have made in our own image. To fear the God we can hear is to fear that which dismantles our idols. The one who dismantles our census, who brings down kings, who destroys our temples, all so that out of the desert creation might be transformed from death to life.
The Stories of my Life 