Week 8 Numbers 21
If there’s an ordered list somewhere where someone ranks all the chapters of the bible from Most Subject Diversity (top) to Most Uniformity (bottom) I figure chapter 21 would be near the top. It ricochets all over the place – almost like the writer just jammed together a bunch of ideas he wasn’t sure where else to include. Not exactly a dog’s breakfast…but lots of diversity:
The account of King Arad
The bronze serpent
Wilderness campsites
A reference to The Book of the Wars of the Lord
The verse of a song
Sihon’s defeat
Og’s defeat
A short proverb
I wondered about the quotation from The Book of the Wars of the Lord. It said: the town of Waheb in the area of Suphah, and the ravines; and the Arnon River and its ravines, which extend as far as the settlement of Ar on the border of Moab. The writer had already said the tribes had trekked out of the Sinai Peninsula as far north as the Arnon River: the Arnon is the boundary line between the Moabites and the Ammonites – then added the quote.
I look at a map. The Arnon River is east of the Dead Sea – Moab to the south. Ammon north.
But I don’t find out anything about The Book of the Wars of the Lord. Looks like maybe it’s a lost book. One item from the Number’s bibliography. But now gone forever.
Note: quotes from Numbers 21:14-15 31 (NLT)