The Field's Musings

Structure of Numbers 1-10 The constituting of the 1st generation army 10-25 The failures of the 1st generation when marching towards the land 26-36 The constitution of the 2nd generation army The Basic Content of 26-36 The new army is constituted 26-32 A call to conquest 33-36 The New Army 26-32 God is forming the second generation into an army as he did with the first generation 1) Literary Structure The count A military census A new leader In 28-31 we see the centrality of the tabernacle 2) Similarities and Differences in comparison with the first generation army The first generation consisted of 603,550 people. The second generation were counted to be 601,730. Why did God have Moses put these numbers in this book? The similarities in these numbers show us that the second generation were to replace the first. In sections 1 and 3 of Numbers (see structure above) the movement of the narrative is the same. First we read about the census secondly we read about the centrality of the taber...

The book of Numbers was written for the 2nd generation to help them to re-commit themselves to taking the land of conquest. Structure 1-10 The constituting of the 1st generation army 10-25 The failures of the 1st generation when marching towards the land 26-36 The constitution of the 2nd generation army We are going to look at chapters 1-25 in this lecture. The Constitution of the Army 1:1-10:10 Israel at Sinai is constituted into an army The army is then counted and arranged in a theocentric process The tabernacle personal and services A description is given of God’s presence with Israel. i) Literary Structure 1-2 The counting and arrangement of the army 3-9 The centrality of the tabernacle 9:15-10 The presence and future of the tabernacle ii) The counting and arrangement of the army The 1st generation census in chapter 1 parallels with the 2nd generation census in chapter 26. The censuses were designed to give a picture of the army that was formed for the conquest. iii) The total num...

The Extrinsic Agents 1) Critical Views Critics claim that ‘J’ (see JEDP theory) the 10th century writer wrote numbers to support David’s Kingdom. The final edition was the work of P the priestly writer from the 6th century. He was concerned about returning to the land. 2) Mosaic Authorship We believe that Moses wrote the book. Moses would have experienced direct revelations from God (1:1). 22-24 Could have been a separate story reported to Moses by human agents 33:2 At the Lords command Moses recorded the stages of the journey. 21:14 = direct reference to another source. This book is likely to be a book of poetry and adoration to God. It was named ‘the Book of the Wars of the Lord.’ The Hebrew of Numbers has been updated from the Hebrew that Moses wrote in. Numbers 12:3 says that Moses was a humble man. How can he be humble if he wrote it? It could be that Moses wrote what God told him to write. It could also be an addition under the Spirit of God. 3) The date of final composition ‘Acr...