What is the structure of the Book of Numbers?
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding.
The Book of Numbers,1 as I understand it, is comprised of two parts:
Chapters 1–10: preparations and provisions.
Chapter 11 to the end of the book: Israel's experiences as they moved on from Sinai towards the promised land. Their journeying from Egypt to Canaan had been interrupted by the sad episode of the golden calf at Mount Sinai. So now, before they proceeded on their journey, God instructed them to make some necessary provision and preparation for their journey.
Some of these preparations in chapters 1–10 deal with practical things that would be necessary for their physical journeying; but most of the provisions and preparations deal with the spiritual needs that they would encounter in the course of their journey.
The preparations fall into five groups:
- Chapters 1–4. This first group deals with the organization of the tribes and of the Levites, both for their journeying—the ordering of their line of march—and for their encampment. The tribes are organised as an army, which forewarns them that their journeys across the wilderness would be a kind of warfare.
Levites are given the practical task of carrying the vessels of the ministry of the tabernacle itself. The items of furniture of the tabernacle were, as we know, simply symbols. The blood shed at the altar, for instance, was not able to cleanse any sin. It was but a symbol pointing forward to the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin. On the other hand, the symbols played an important part in the spiritual experience of the people of Israel, and it was the responsibility of the Levites to see that they carried these vessels on their shoulders, and did not leave them behind. It would have been a sad thing if, at the end of a day's march, an Israelite came to the priests wishing to bring a sacrifice for his sins, and seeking forgiveness, if the priests could not find the altar anywhere, because the Levites had forgotten it and left it behind in the course of their journey.
The symbolic furniture of the tabernacle points us in our day towards the great truths of the gospel. Those truths are written down in holy Scripture; but if those truths are to be kept alive and applied to the people of our own generation, we shall have to carry them, so to speak. For instance, the truth of justification by faith is not automatically maintained in Christian churches—look what happened in medieval times until God used Luther to revive the great teaching of justification by faith. So also all the other major doctrines of salvation are maintained as living doctrines as we, the people of God, understand them, experience them, and carry them, so to speak, and preach them, and make them available to all who need to hear them.
Chapters 5–6:21. This group is concerned with the cleanliness of the camp. With hundreds of thousands of people living in tents and travelling through the desert where water was often in short supply, hygiene would have been of supreme importance. If people were careless about their personal hygiene, the camp could have been decimated by infectious diseases. The regulations for this group, therefore, deal with cleanliness at the physical level; but also, and more importantly, at the moral and spiritual level. We are here reminded of such Scriptures as 2 Corinthians 7:1 and Hebrews 12:14–15.
Chapter 6:22–27. This is a very short group. It is concerned with the Aaronic blessing pronounced by the high priest upon the people of God. Though it is very short, it is exceedingly important. Its aim was to fill the people with the sense of the divine blessing because one of their greatest dangers as they crossed the desert would be that experiences would arise that challenged their faith in the love and blessing of God, and when people come to doubt the love of God because of their experiences in life it raises profound implications. If I cannot believe that God loves me now, then how can I be sure that God ever did love or ever will love me? A God who loves me to day and forgets to love me tomorrow is not real. The Aaronic blessing was meant, therefore, to fortify the hearts of the people against all those experiences in their desert journey that might suggest to them that God had forgotten to be gracious to them.
Chapters 7 and 8. In this fourth group, chapter 8 has to do with the offering of the Levites as a living sacrifice to God. Theirs was to be the arduous task of erecting and then dismantling the tabernacle, and of carrying its furniture. To prepare them for this task therefore, they had to be willing to be taken to the altar and be offered as a living sacrifice to God. How else would they find devotion strong enough to make them do their task loyally and efficiently all through the journey? It reminds us of Paul's exhortation in the early verses of Romans chapter 12.
But chapter 8 is preceded by the dedication of the altar, recorded in chapter 7. At that dedication, the princes of the people showed before God and the nation what the altar meant to them, and this chapter challenges us to reassess constantly in our lives what the sacrifice of Christ means to us. The more the sacrifice of Christ comes to mean to us, the greater will be our willingness to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Unless we are prepared to yield our bodies as a living sacrifice to God, our priestly service to God and to his people will be sorely diminished in the course of life.
- Chapters 9 and 10. These chapters are concerned with God's guidance of his people, and how they were to know it. The first instruction in these chapters is God's insistence that the people keep the Passover. If they cannot keep it in the first month of a year, they still must keep it, so they are allowed to keep it in the second month of the year. Why was the keeping of the Passover so exceedingly important for them? The reason was, it recorded not only the fact that they had come out of Egypt, but why they had come out of Egypt, and by what means they had been delivered from Egypt. If ever they forgot why it was they left Egypt, and at what cost they had been delivered from Egypt, their journey would cease to make sense. Why would they be travelling across a difficult desert, if there was no real reason why they should leave Egypt in the first place? And the lesson for us here has been well put in 2 Peter 1:9, where Peter describes the plight of people who have forgotten the cleansing from their old sins.
These, then, are the main groups of the preparations for the journey. A close study of the rest of the book will show the relevance of these preparations. For instance, chapter 11 has no sooner begun than the people begin to murmur against God, and eventually decide that life in Egypt had been very enjoyable, and that they were stupid ever to have left it. It is not surprising that they then refused to go on with the journey, refused to enter the promised land, and God himself shut them out of it.
With this hint then I leave you, if you care, to work out how the rest of the book relates to the preparation chapters. For instance, in chapter 2 of the preparations, we read of the trial of jealousy: about what was to be done when a man suspected his wife of being unfaithful and he himself became jealous. The journey chapters will relate how Israel, as the wife of Jehovah, became unfaithful to him, and God himself became jealous (see Numbers 25:11).
Or again, you may like to compare the third group of the preparations with 22:6–23:20. Or again, you may compare the dedication of the altar and the consecration of the Levites in the fourth group of the preparations with the rebellion of the Levites in chapter 16, and with what happened to the altar as a result of that rebellion (see Numbers 16:38).
God bless you in your study of Numbers.
Yours sincerely in Christ,
1 See also: David Gooding, Numbers Study Notes