Day 42. Numbers 9-11

According to our reading from Numbers, all Israelites without exception were commanded to observe Passover. Failing to do so, they would be “cut off from the people for not presenting the LORD’s offering at its appointed time” (9:13). No excuses were allowed! Not even ritual uncleanness should prevent anyone from celebrating Passover with the community “at the appointed time” (see Numbers 9:9). To neglect this feast of feasts was to be excluded from the covenant people and from fellowship with the LORD.
But it is worth noting that Israel was not, at this point at least, a closed community defined by race or ethnicity. It was a vital and open community of faith. Non-Jews were invited to celebrate the feast together with Israel. So our text says—“Any alien residing among you who wishes to keep the Passover to the LORD shall do so according to the statute of the Passover and according to its regulation; you shall have one statute for both the resident alien and the native” (9:14).
The people of Israel might be the children of Abraham, but as a community they were willing to adopt those who would worship their God, obey the Law, and join with the community in their sacred feasts. There were barriers in Israelite religion, but they were intended to protect the holiness of God and not to keep out strangers. The boundaries of the chosen people were porous and the way to membership was open.
Note Moses’ plea to his father-in-law—“Come with us, and we will treat you well” (10:29). The blessings of the LORD’s presence were available to any who wanted to join the movement—“If you go with us, whatever good the LORD does for us, the same we will do for you” (10:32). Spiritual conformity is not demanded of Israel. There is room for spontaneity in the covenant community. The spirit of God is available to many, and ideally to all. (11:26ff) This attitude cannot help but remind us of the radical openness and excitement of early Christianity.
In spite of the law and disciplines that governed them, in many ways the Israelites of the wandering years were a flexible people. Every part of their existence was moveable. When the cloud of glory and fiery pillar moved, they moved; when it stopped, they stayed put. The writer of Numbers sees this as a sign of an ideal relationship of God based upon obedience. It was a Golden Age. The people were responsive to the will of God, and God was responsive to the needs of the people.
The silver trumpets the Lord had them make—see Chapter 10:1ff—not only summoned Israel to the entrance of the tent of meeting and sounded the alarm if danger was near. The trumpets also served to remind the LORD of the terms of his covenant obligations lest he forget them. As the text says—“You shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, so that you may be remembered before the LORD your God and be saved from your enemies” (10:9).
The God of the Book of Numbers is a very human God, one who gets angry, one who forgets and needs to be reminded. The LORD will even endure a tirade like that which Moses delivers in Chapter 11, verses 10 and following. Infuriated by the people’s harping on the bad old days in Egypt, Moses explodes in fury. “Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them . . . .?” he demands. He compares the Lord to a neglectful mother who has saddled him with her spoiled brood.
And LORD listens and does not “put him death at once,” as Moses almost dares him to, but rather puts some of the spirit that has been upon Moses solely and puts it on seventy elders so that they can share his leadership. The LORD hears out Moses’ outburst with patience and gives him the relief he needs in a stressful and demanding job. God is a human God indeed—motherly in his care for his children, and even willing to indulge their outbursts from time to time.
In the Book of Numbers, the LORD is sometimes fierce and inflexible in his commands, but he is also capable of understanding and very human tenderness.