Day 38. Numbers 1-2

The Book of Numbers recounts the memory of a series of adventures the People of Israel had on their journey through the wilderness of Sinai. It was written centuries after the events it recounts, and looks back upon the wilderness time as a Golden Age in which the people truly walked with God.
The book is loosely structured around a journey, and its theme is the faithfulness of the God who journeys with his People. He was their Guide. The Israelites knew generally where they were headed—the Promised Land, the land that had been promised by God to Abraham--but none of them had ever been there. They simply went on traveling, following their Guide, until they got there, and the journey became the destination.
And it is like that with us too. We are on a journey as well. We know we are headed somewhere, but is often difficult to tell from day to day whether we are journeying or just wandering. But that hardly matters. As long is we live in this world, our journey is our destination. We are not lost as long as long as our Guide is with us.
The Book of Numbers begins with a census. In the ancient world a census was usually ordered by a ruler for reasons of taxation, like the census conducted under the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, which forms a context for the story of the birth of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel.
Here the census is ordered by the LORD for military purposes. Israel in the wilderness is an army on the move with a host of followers and non-combatants. In our reading the twelve tribes are mustered into regiments, their camps arranged symmetrically around the Tent of Meeting (2:17).
It is hard to exaggerate how warlike these first books of the Bible are. Israel during the wilderness journey was a theocracy, a society governed by God through his representatives--Moses, Aaron and later Joshua—who exercise charismatic leadership, conducting holy war on behalf of God and the people.
God, however, is their real commander. His tent occupies the central position in the camp, and there he lived among his People, served by the Levites, who were exempted from military service in order to keep themselves and the LORD’s tabernacle free from any pollution or uncleanness (1:48ff). During these wilderness years, the Tabernacle for Israel was a unifying symbol and a source of spiritual power.