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Week 8  Numbers 26

In Numbers 1 there’s a military census of the tribes.
Then in Numbers 26 there’s a second census.
If I’m not paying attention I might think chapter 26 is just a rehash of chapter 1 (or by that time I might have totally forgotten about 1). But 1 & 26 are two different censuses separated by forty years of time spent in the wilderness.
When I was reading 1 about a week ago I was interested in the order the names were listed so I wrote them down on a sheet of lined yellow paper. [Q: what did I discover? Short A: not much! (see ‘lists & lists’ and the Directed Listing Technique).]
Anyway I’d also written down the census numbers beside each name in chapter 1 (e.g. Reuben 46,500) so when I saw more numbers in 26 I figured I’d compare them.
All 603,000 men in List #1 had died. 602,000 had replaced them in List #2.
7 tribes had increased in number.
The Simeon tribe had decreased catastrophically – 37,000 fewer men.
Manasseh had grown by 21,000 – the largest increase.
The biggest tribe in List #1 was Judah…and Judah retained his Number 1 ranking in List #2.
The smallest tribe in List #1 was Manasseh; Simeon the smallest in List #2.
Hmmm…there’s no mental Red Sea opening up for me while I look at these numbers so I’m a bit disappointed. But my expectations weren’t really sky-high to start with. There’s more lists to come. Something might develop.

Note: List #1 is in Numbers 1:20-46 & List #2 in 26:4-51. The census numbers listed here are rounded-up (and don’t quote the stats without double-checking).

Week 7  Numbers 22-24

The story of Balaam and his donkey is one of my favorites. It’s really Balaam’s story. But even though the donkey is a bit player he’s not just decoration either.
I don’t know for sure what-all Balaam’s special talents were. He was a kind of shaman…maybe a diviner, maybe he could influence events, maybe he could cure illness.
But one thing he definitely had was a reputation for being able to bless or curse people. That’s what Balak needed him for. Cursing.
Balaam had direct communication with the Lord on five different occasions in the story. And in the story’s roughly 96-verses Balaam spoke 28-verses of prophetic blessing that came directly from the Lord. On the surface it looks like Balak is the villain and Balaam the hero – a real man-of-God type guy.
But then I remember the donkey. He had three direct revelations of his own from the Lord. And he miraculously stared talking ‘human’. But that didn’t make him a real donkey-of-God type donkey.
Balaam and his donkey play similar roles – instrumental roles. They both had unusual religious experiences. And they both got some special (temporary) language capacities.
But that’s about as far as it went for both of them. After his conversation with Balaam the donkey reverted to his inarticulated braying. And after his conversations with the Lord and his prophetic blessings Balaam reverted to his normal behaviour – doing what his paymaster wanted in the first place.

Week 7  Numbers 16

The story of Korah Dathan & Abiram and their 250 associates is pretty sobering because the Lord is responsible for the execution of that entire group.
It makes me think about being a bible-reader and I ask myself one key question: do I get to make a judgment call about the Lord’s action? Put another way…do I get to decide whether the Lord acted correctly or incorrectly?
This is an intriguing (and potentially powerful) position to find myself in…deciding whether or not the Lord did wrong.
I figure each bible-reader gets to make that call and it’s a pretty basic one-of-two-options call to make: a) I do get to make my own personal judgment call about what the bible says the Lord does; b) I don’t get to make a judgment call about what the bible says the Lord does.
Personally I can definitely see the appeal of the first option – it puts me in the Driver’s Seat…I Decide for Myself! I tend to think this would make my decision-making in bible-reading a lot simpler.
But for now I’m sticking with the second option – I’ll read the bible and let it tell me what it’s telling me and not me tell it what it’s telling me. Unfortunately there’s a higher degree of difficulty with b) so that means my bible-reading won’t get any simpler.

Week 7  Numbers 11 Psalm 45

Out in the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula Israel was complaining about food and the Lord said he would provide meat for them and Moses reminded him that there were 600,000+ people so…realistically…how was that possible?
The Lord asked: is there any limit to my power? It was asked in a question-like way but it really meant There is No Limit to My Power. Power with no ceiling. Power to do whatever. Absolute power. Which is pretty impressive…unless of course I’m on the receiving end of the power.
If someone else has unlimited power he has the potential to negatively affect me and so at that point I start feeling less impressed with the power and more concerned about the exercise of power. Impressed at first…and then concern sets in.
The day after I read the Numbers story I read: your throne, O God, endures forever and ever. Your royal power is expressed in justice. You love what is right and hate what is wrong.
There’s the story of the powerful king who wanted a guy’s property so he trumped-up charges & put the guy on a show-trial & executed him & then took his land. That’s an example of something the Lord couldn’t possibly do. He has the power to do anything. But his power is only operable if it’s just & fair & impartial. Which is a huge relief.

Note: quotes from Numbers 11:23 & Psalm 45:6-7 (NLT). And see the Ahab-Naboth story 1 Kings 21.

Week 6  Numbers 6

Schedule for Today: Numbers Four-Five-Six.
Four gives instructions to the three families of priests (Kohath & Gershon & Merari) for dismantling and transporting the tabernacle.
Five is the (baffling) Adultery Test. [In the NT the Lord said Moses had given the law of divorce because people had hard-hearts. I don’t know how many laws were created because of hard-heartedness or envy jealousy hatred lust anger pride or like that. But this one sounds like a candidate.]
Six is the Nazarite Vow. This chapter is pretty interesting and so I slow down to look at the elements of an unusual and added-effort vow. Until about half-way through the chapter when I look at my watch. Yikes! My time’s up!
I’ve walked into a bible-reader’s quandary: do I stop right now and come back to it tomorrow…or gallop through and finish the chapter? Executive decision-making time… Since I want to finish the chapter I start speed-reading. And that works okay until I get near the end…
May the Lord bless you and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favour and give you his peace.
This is one of the great-great paragraphs in the bible and I realize it’s crazy to blast right on through. I pretty much have to slow down. It only takes 15-seconds to read anyway. So I take 30 to read it twice. Slowly.

Note: quote from Numbers 6:24-26 (NIV); see Matthew 19:7-9.

Week 6  Psalm 39

I know a guy whose mom lived to be 104 years old.
Which seems like a very long time.
She would have been born at the end of World War I and lived through the roaring-Twenties
great-Depression
world-war-2
Hiroshima
Chinese-revolution
decolonization
cold-war
space-race
collapse-of-the-Soviet-empire
climate-change
9/11
globalization
decline -of-the-American-empire
cryptocurrency…like that (plus a lot more).
It all seems like a very long time.
Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
Remind me that…my life is fleeing away.
An entire lifetime is just a moment to you;
Human existence is but a breath.
We are merely moving shadows…
Human existence is as frail as breath.
When it comes to Time it’s kind of crazy comparing Human Time with the Lord’s Time (104 vs. 1 Trillion+ doesn’t even register).
So I don’t really think David’s main point was to compare Time with – basically – Eternity. I think that’s why he ends up focusing on the (very few) years he does actually have:
O Lord…I am your guest – a traveler passing through…Spare me so I can smile again before I am gone and exist no more.
This sounds to me like an I-Don’t-Have-Too-Much-Time Psalm.

Note: quotes from Psalm 39:5-6, 11, 12-13 (NLT)

Week 6  Numbers 1-2

Moses wasn’t in story-telling mode when he started Numbers.
I knew right away I was in bleak country so decided to switch to my Directed Listing Technique (DLT). The DLT is in the same class of bible-reading-assistance techniques as Directed Sketching or Directed Diagramming (Directed Doodling – which is more mindless – is in a related but different class).
Last year I did some Directed Diagramming of Numbers 2 to visually orient myself about Israel’s desert camp. That drone’s-eye sketch-up helped me read in a more focused way.
This year when I read the first list of tribal names I got out a pad of yellow paper and wrote them in a column down the left margin.
Something was fishy. I flipped back to Genesis 29-30 and in my Column 2 listed Jacob’s sons in their birth order. Which was a different order than Column 1.
Column 3 was the second list in Numbers 1 – the military census list. I wrote those names down and saw they were in a different order from Columns 1 & 2.
Then Numbers 2 re-categorized the twelve tribes into a list of four groups of three. This one – Column 4 – was similar to the census list but still slightly different.
I spent a bit of time trying to dope out the differences. But in the end I had my four columns of names in similar – but different – order. And in the end I still had questions.
Which – I decided – was okay. The Directed Listing Technique helped focus my attention (riddle-solving wasn’t its intended function).

Week 6  Leviticus 19

By the time I get to this point in Leviticus I’ve read a whole bunch of legal-religious data. Specific details about animal or vegetable offerings & methods to process offerings & ordination rules & kosher or non-kosher foods & infectious diseases & sexual red-lines not to cross. Like that.
There’s enough of these rules that don’t have any contemporary practical or experiential or personal value that I’m formulating an (unwritten) guideline that none of them are of any relevance. Then I get to chapter nineteen and see things like this:
don’t slander people…
don’t endanger your neighbour’s life…
don’t hate your brother in your heart…
don’t seek revenge
love your neighbour as yourself.
Hmmmm….these sound like pretty believable and decent comments (I could likely even get away with saying them out loud to someone here in town…depending on the person).
I figure one of the crosses a reader has to carry is to be making discriminating choices all along the way about what I value and what I don’t. (What I don’t think I get to say is: “None of it’s of any use”.)
And come to think of it I figure I might be crazy to dump any of it. Just because I’ll never ever have any personal use for post-menstruation separation-purification rules I’m reluctant to say that regulation is worthless. I’m a bible-reader…trying to frame up the basic structure of the bible’s early times…and I need all the materials I can get my hands on.

Note: paraphrased from Leviticus 19:16-18

Week 6  Leviticus 18

The final paragraph is pretty interesting. Moses is talking about the land of Canaan – which is Israel’s destination – and he says that the land has been defiled. That’s the word he uses…defiled. It basically means getting dirtied up. But there’s more to it. It’s like when something that people consider important has been desecrated. De-sacredized. Un-venerated. Like for instance if someone blew up a statute of the Buddha then that’s something way more than just physical property damage.
So Moses is talking about Canaan being degraded and defiled.
It sounds like something more than environmental degradation resulting from human stupidity or greed. If I pour toxic effluents into the lake and the water gets polluted that’s a pretty detectable cause-effect.
But Moses is making a less detectible connection. For about 18-verses he’s been listing sexual practices that he calls ‘defilements’. Moses says that the sexual practices have tarnished the people practicing them. But then he goes a bit farther and says those personal defilements have spilled over into the actual physical landscape of their near eastern homeland.
This link seems like mind-boggling lunacy here in Alberta where we mostly figure that sexual actions are personal and private and have no effect on anything. We know that mercury in the lake = contaminated fish. But sexual actions? No big outcomes.
Yet here in Leviticus 18 Moses identifies personal sexual tarnishments that expanded with enough symbiotic oomph to eventually taint the whole prairie.

Note: see Leviticus 18:24-30

Week 5  Psalm 33

There’s always saber-rattling going on somewhere. I haven’t checked the news yet but when I do I predict that today – Thursday, February 3, 2022 – some country will be challenging another one. I’ll maybe see a map with a bunch of little blue tanks jets infantry weapons with bracketed numbers beside them and they’re facing east and then there’s a yellow line and on the other side of the yellow line facing west I’ll see red tanks jets infantry weapons with bracketed numbers beside them. Red Country’s red tanks might say (1000) and Blue Country’s blue tanks (200). So…the mathematical forecast of Modern Warfare calculates  that Red 1000 will beat Blue 200.
Today I read:
…the best-equipped army cannot save a king, nor is great strength enough to save a warrior
...don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory – for all its strength, it cannot save you.
I checked the course offerings of the Royal Military College in Kingston Ontario and didn’t find any syllabi with titles like – for instance – Religious Factors & Influences in Armed Conflict. By contrast David didn’t isolate international warfare from the unpredictables of outside-the-normal-envelope influences:
…the Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race
…the Lord shatters the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes
…we depend on the Lord alone to save us…protecting us like a shield.

Note: quotes from Psalm 33:16, 17, 13, 10, 20 (NLT). Added note: When I checked today’s news I saw my forecast was wrong. My predicted yellow line was actually white.