Week 6 Numbers 7
There are 89-verses in chapter seven and they describe the offerings that each of the twelve tribes brought to the Lord. They were expensive and elaborate gifts: silver bowls of flour, a gold bowl of incense, animals for sacrifice: bulls rams lambs goats oxen and rams. It takes five verses and ~92 words just to describe the gift that Judah brought.
Then it describes Issachar’s gift – flour incense bulls rams lambs goats oxen and rams. It takes five verses and ~92 words to describe the gift. It’s not only similar to Judah’s gift. It’s the exact same gift.
Then Zebulun’s gift is described in five verses with the exact same ~92 words as Judah’s and Issachar’s.
Ditto for Reuben Simeon Gad and like that…
I figure the writer could have just listed the twelve tribal leaders and then added something like: “and they each brought the same gift of…(then plug in the five verses and ~92 words)”. Readers would get the point. Plus chapter seven would be approximately 55-verses shorter.
Yesterday there was a lot of repetition in chapter one and when I checked a different bible I saw it had taken a short-cut and omitted most of the repetition. So I checked that bible today. But its chapter seven was 89-verses long too and it had twelve 5-verse paragraphs with ~92 words that were exactly the same.
I wondered why the editors had cut out the repetition yesterday but not today. Maybe their rule was: once isn’t enough.