Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Numbers

By Carolyn Pressler

The Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries provide compact, critical commentaries on the books of the Old Testament for the use of theological students and pastors. The commentaries are also useful for upper-level college or university students and for those responsible for teaching in congregational settings. In addition to providing basic information and insights into the Old Testament writings, these commentaries exemplify the tasks and procedures of careful interpretation, to assist students of the Old Testament in coming to an informed and critical engagement with the biblical texts themselves.

The present volume gives an up-to-date, readable commentary on the book of Numbers. The commentary covers critical issues section by section while emphasizing the larger theological and literary issues in Numbers and illustrating its relevance for modern readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Oct 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781501846540

Carolyn Pressler

Carolyn Pressler is Harry C. Piper Professor of Biblical Interpretation at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Now I get it. The Pentateuch is the ‘family story’ of ancient Israel, a student in my Hebrew Bible class once exclaimed. The student, a family therapist, explained that in order to understand a family’s dynamics, he listened for its story"—the collection of memories, tall tales, funny stories, even songs and jokes, told at family events and re-appropriated generation by generation. Family stories create bonds, express and pass on values, and form identity. Often told with humor or exaggeration, they are more about experiential truth and belonging than about precise descriptions of events. Numbers is the fourth book of the Pentateuch, the great story of ancient Israel’s formation that stretches from Genesis through Deuteronomy. In many ways, Numbers fits that student’s description. To be sure, the book reflects intentional crafting by authors who shaped their people’s traditions to express particular theological and political perspectives. Nonetheless, in many ways the metaphor is apt.

Like many family traditions, Numbers contains adventurous tales but also a multitude of other genres. These include songs, scraps of ancient poetry, census lists, temple accounts, ritual prescriptions, prophetic oracles, civil laws, battle reports, a lampoon, and a sacral calendar.

Also, like a family’s intergenerational story, Numbers in its final form is the achievement of many different voices over a long period of time. The dominant ones are Priestly, as is evident by their attention to such matters as sacral calendars, purity and impurity, sacrificial offerings, and the tabernacle—all of which reflect a deep conviction that Israel’s God, a God of incomparable power and holiness, dwells in Israel’s very midst. Those voices are not without self-interest; politics and theology interweave, as the exclusive claims to priesthood of those who count their descent from Aaron are resolutely affirmed. The priests have included voices from other social circles and time periods, however, especially the work of earlier, non-priestly storytellers, whose tales of Israel’s wilderness wanderings, rebellions, and judgments are woven into the center of the book (Num 11–25). Other, even older, storytellers are present in the account of a non-Israelite prophet, Balaam, whom an artful, much later storyteller has provided with a talking donkey more insightful than his rider (Num 22), while yet other voices have contributed descriptions of the promised land’s boundaries, a work song, and so forth.

Moreover, like a family story writ large, much of Numbers appears to have been passed down from generation to generation. How Numbers came into being is part of the larger question of the composition of the Pentateuch, a question that is currently far from resolved and goes well beyond the scope of this commentary. (For a clear summary of Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis, see Coogin, 2006, 21–30; for an easily accessible summary of the history of scholarship leading up to that hypothesis, and the early challenges that eventually eroded the consensus it once commanded, see Blenkinsopp, 1994, 308–18. An excellent discussion of the state of the question at the time of this writing is found in the introduction to the exhaustive volume edited by Gertz, Levinson, Rom-Shiloni, and Schmid, 2016, 1–11.)

The Priestly voices that dominate Numbers are fairly easily identified by their distinctive vocabulary and concerns. Determining when they gave their traditions decisive written shape is more difficult. Biblical scholars date Priestly writings anywhere from the eighth century BCE to the fourth century BCE, or even later. The language of the Priestly strata in Numbers, as well as some of the concepts distinctive to that book, most closely resembles those of late texts such as Chronicles and the final chapters of Ezekiel. Moreover, as Baruch Levine has argued, the Priestly layers of Numbers are later than Priestly writings in Exodus and Leviticus, which stress the priesthood of the Aaronides but do not emphasize the Levites’ subordinate status (Levine, 1993, 103–8). For those reasons, and because the final chapters of Numbers presuppose the Deuteronomistic Historians’ work (see comments on chs. 34 and 35, pp. 299, 304–5), this commentary assumes that the priests compiled Numbers during the early Persian period; that is, late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. Tensions between texts with clear cultic concerns indicate that Numbers results from multiple Priestly writers working over a period of time.

Discerning the nature of the Priestly voices that shaped Numbers, and their relationship to the earlier voices present in the book, is also difficult. According to Gertz, Levinson, Rom-Shiloni, and Schmid, in North America and Israel a majority of scholars continue to speak of interwoven written sources, though how they define and date those sources varies widely. Similarities of diction and perspective of the pre-Priestly stories incorporated into the wilderness accounts (Num 11–25) suggest that they may indeed have been part of a written document available to the priests. In keeping with scholarly convention, in this commentary we will call the earlier stratum Yahwist (or J), without, however, assuming that it is pre-exilic. Whether those pre-Priestly wilderness stories formed part of a written narrative extending from creation to the edge of the promised land is also an open question. In Numbers, the relationship of the Priestly writings and the older narratives looks less like distinct documents woven together by an editor than it does the product of an ongoing school of Priestly writers who took up and repurposed parts of earlier stories to suit their agenda.

BUT DID IT HAPPEN? NUMBERS AND HISTORY

Except those for whom its Mosaic authorship and historical inerrancy are doctrines of faith, for over two hundred years biblical scholars have recognized that the Pentateuch, including Numbers, was compiled over a long period of time, incorporated diverse oral and written documents, and received its decisive form no earlier than the mid-monarchical period, and probably much later. Since a majority of scholars date the rise of ancient Israel to the thirteenth century BCE, assuming a late sixth/early fifth century BCE dating for the book, there is a gap of seven or eight centuries between the completion of Numbers and the events it purports to describe. That, together with the absence of any extra-biblical evidence for the exodus or the wilderness wanderings—along with the folkloric, poetic, theological, and political cast of much of the book—raises questions about its possible historicity.

The story that twelve Israelite tribes, numbering nearly two million, escaped from Egypt and wandered in the wilderness for forty years before their sons quickly conquered Canaan is probably a legend of origins. Indeed, there is no scholarly consensus on how Israel arose in its land. Even the biblical evidence is contradictory, with Joshua 1–12 envisioning a rapid, unified, and completely victorious conquest, but Judges 1 and other parts of Joshua suggesting that the conquest was piecemeal, gradual, and initially met with only partial success. Meanwhile, archaeologists have found that many of the sites Israel was said to have conquered were uninhabited during the time that Israel supposedly defeated them. Numerous scholars hold that rather than an outside group of tribes who conquered the inhabitants of Canaan in order to occupy their land, the original Israelites were actually impoverished Canaanites (see Dever, 1993, 26–60). Subjected to chaotic social conditions that made it difficult to glean a livelihood while paying taxes to their overlords, the beleaguered Canaanite peasants left the coastal lowlands of Canaan to settle in unoccupied hill country that developed into the backbone of Israel. Moreover, many recent studies indicate that the tribes were social constructs rather than biological groupings. They may well have emerged when clans occupying a particular region cooperated with each other around trade, marriage, and defense, and came to understand each other as bound by biological ties. Such kinship ties would be in part biological and in part sociological.

The traditions in Numbers may have been rooted in the experiences of small groups: one that escaped forced labor in Egypt, and another that sojourned in the wilderness. When those groups settled in the Canaanite hill country, they brought their memories with them. Like the story of Plymouth Rock, which, originally the experience of a few people, came to belong to the whole of America’s dominant culture, perhaps those cherished traditions were widely embraced, becoming part of the family story of the whole of ancient Israel. In any case, like the family stories my student described, the significance of Numbers lies less in its historical accuracy than in its capacity to strengthen communal bonds, foster a sense of identity, and express experiential and spiritual understandings. Those include the conviction that God is utterly transcendent and yet dwells in the very midst of the people, and that the Holy One guides and saves those people, while also holding them accountable.

THE NAME AND STRUCTURE OF NUMBERS

The English name of the book, Numbers, referring to the census counts in chapters 1–4 and 26, derives from the Latin Numeri, via the Greek Arithmoi. These in turn appear to be based on an ancient Hebrew title of the book, khomesh ha-pekuim: the fifth of the mustered (trans. Milgrom, 1990, xi). The Hebrew title, bemidbar, in the wilderness (the fifth word of v. 1), lifts up the stories of wandering that occupy the center of the book.

The multiple voices and forms that comprise Numbers can give it the appearance of a miscellany, and, indeed, it is not always possible to identify why some of its passages are placed where they are. Nonetheless, noting that Numbers is structured around the censuses found in chapters 1–4 and 26, as Dennis Olson observes in his groundbreaking thesis (Olson, 1985), helps make sense of an otherwise confusing book. The first census tallies the men of fighting age belonging to the generation that escaped Egypt. That generation rebels against God and God’s chosen leaders, resulting in the divine judgment that they will die in the wilderness, without entering the promised land.

Numbers 26 enumerates the adult sons of the rebellious generation; the subsequent chapters demonstrate that God offers this second generation a new chance. They are not bound by their fathers’ sin or their fathers’ punishment but can choose faithfulness and receive the promised land. There are no rebellions in the second part of the book (chs. 26–36)—and no deaths (Olson, 1985). The two-part story of Zelophehad’s daughters, found in Numbers 27 and 36, frames the accounts of the second generation, additionally supporting Olson’s structure. Editorial activity, including the repetition of the phrase In the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho, and signs of Deuteronomistic influence, further knit the last ten chapters together as a unit.

While the two-part structure Olson has identified appears to be dominant, perhaps because it is the work of later redactors, geographical notices provide the book an alternative three-part structure. First, Numbers 1:1–10:10 is set in the wilderness of Sinai, where God instructs Moses how Israel must prepare for the journey to Canaan. In this section, the tribes punctiliously obey YHWH’s commands. The second part, Numbers 10:11–21:35, describes Israel’s wilderness journey, albeit with a pause in Kadesh. The journey, initially depicted as a military march, disintegrates into forty years of wandering, as Israel repeatedly rebels against God and just as often suffers the consequence of divine judgment. Third, in Numbers 22:1, Israel arrives at the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho, where they stay through the final chapter of Numbers and on through Deuteronomy. The three sections, describing Israel as stationary, then mobile, and finally again stationary, roughly correspond to Israelite obedience, then Israelite sin and consequent suffering, and finally, obedience again. This correspondence is not completely neat; there are hopeful signs while Israel is still on the move, such as its conquest of Transjordan lands in Numbers 21, and the rebellion of the tribes a final time in Numbers 25, after they are encamped in the plains of Moab. Nonetheless, reading the book with an eye to its geographical structure leaves the impression that settled life improves Israelite chances of faithfulness and blessing.

CONTEXTS FOR READING NUMBERS

Numbers is integrally part of Israel’s great family story, the Pentateuch, or Torah. Its opening chapter finds Israel in the wilderness of Sinai, where it has been since Exodus 19:1. Israel continues to encamp at the plains of Moab, where it arrives in Numbers 22:1, until the tribes move to cross the Jordan in Joshua 3:1. Setting Numbers within this pentateuchal context offers a rich sense of its meaning; the stories and laws in Numbers as a whole reflect the ancestral tales that reiterate God’s promise of progeny and especially land to Abraham and his descendants. The censuses, assessing Israel’s military capacity at over six hundred thousand men, recall the genealogy of Genesis 46:8-27, where Jacob’s family numbers seventy, thus demonstrating that God has indeed fulfilled the promise to multiply Abraham’s descendants. The whole of the book continues God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from their bondage in Egypt (Exod 1–15), while the stories of Israel’s rebellions (Num 11–25) frequently parallel the murmuring tales of Exodus 16–18. Meanwhile, the regulations intertwined with the wilderness narratives largely depend upon and fill gaps in the laws of Leviticus, and the final chapters of the book anticipate the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34, as well as the conquest and apportionment of the land in Joshua.

The historical events in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE that shook and reshaped Judah form a second vital context in which to read Numbers. A small and relatively powerless people throughout its history, in the early sixth century BCE Judah twice rebelled against the ruling empire, Babylon. Both times Babylon responded militarily, conquering the vassal kingdom, removing its king from the throne, and exiling its elite leaders. The second time, in 586 BCE, the conquest was catastrophic; Babylon razed Jerusalem and its environs, destroying much of its infrastructure and decimating its population, burning the temple (the symbol of YHWH’s protective presence), ending the Davidic kingship, reducing Judah to a colony ruled by Babylonian-appointed governors, and dragging a second group of Judahite leadership into exile. Interpreting Numbers within the context of the last decades of the sixth century and into the fifth century BCE, the sin and judgment stories read as a theodicy, explaining the recent national trauma as resulting from Judah’s sin, not YHWH’s injustice.

In 539 BCE, roughly fifty years after Babylon razed Jerusalem, Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon and its vast territories. The Persian ruler appears to have sought to secure the loyalty of Jerusalem, a city located near its frontier with Egypt. According to Ezra 1 and 6, Cyrus and his successors allowed Judahites whom Babylon had exiled to return to their land, encouraged and supported the rebuilding of the Jerusalemite temple that Babylon had destroyed, and ruled through local rulers whom it both supported and controlled. The Cyrus Cylinder, an inscription that attributes Cyrus’s victories to the Babylonian god Marduk and credits the Persian ruler with returning Babylonian cult images to their temples, offers some support to the theory that Cyrus, like some earlier Assyrian rulers, found it politically expedient to restore privileges to certain strategically important towns such as Jerusalem (see Kurht, 1983, 92–94).

Read against that reconstruction of the Persian period, Numbers offers a word of hope, insisting that though their parents sinned and were exiled, dying far from their land, the sons and daughters of that generation were offered a chance to begin anew. Like the generation born in the wilderness in Numbers, they too may choose to obey God, and so (re)claim the promised land. Numbers also may have aimed at motivating exiles who resisted the Persian leaders’ invitation to return to Judah. The number of exiled Judahites who returned to their homeland was relatively small. After all, decades had passed, and the younger generation, born in Mesopotamia, did not know Judah, which by all accounts was a backwater, with Jerusalem largely in ruins. Numbers depicts resistance to entering Canaan—the promised land to which God is leading Israel—as sinful rebellion that evokes divine wrath.

The interpreter’s context is yet a third one to consider. This commentary takes a dialogical approach to interpreting Numbers, listening with care to the ancient voices speaking through the texts, and also aware that what interpreters bring to the dialogue shapes what they see. My perspective, as a Christian who has spent my career teaching in a progressive, ecumenical Christian seminary, has been broadened and enriched by the insights of modern and ancient Jewish scholars as well as by those who bring anthropological, non-theistic approaches to the Hebrew Bible. Conservative and evangelical Christians have also challenged and expanded my understanding of Numbers. Similarly, as a white North American woman, I am indebted to scholars from other social locations who have both helped me recognize the limits of my perspective and offered alternative angles into the book. Nonetheless, given the particularity of any interpretation, I encourage readers to engage interpreters from diverse religious and cultural contexts, as they form their own view of Numbers. Those of us raised in and or living in cultures shaped by biblical religions are in some fashion part of the ongoing community that tells, receives, reinterprets, and passes down the Pentateuch. Ancient Israel’s family story, as distant and strange as it often seems, is nonetheless part of our stories.

COMMENTARY

NUMBERS 1 AND 2

Identity and Order

Numbers begins with the headcounts that give the book its name. YHWH commands Moses to appoint tribal leaders to conduct a census of men of military age in their ancestral houses (i.e., their tribes). The totals are then reported—twice, once in chapter 1 and again in chapter 2. The apparently dry nature of the narrative belies its theological significance, however. These chapters convey a sense of divinely granted order, leadership, and purpose that would have sounded a note of hope to Persian-period Judah, a battered and fragmented people.

Literary Analysis

Numbers is an integral part of Israel’s larger story, leading from Genesis through Deuteronomy, from creation to the emergence of Israel on the edge of its promised land. It is also a literary unit with its own integrity. Consideration of Numbers 1 in its context thus requires looking at the chapter in relationship to the preceding books of the Pentateuch, as well as its relationship to Numbers as a distinct book.

Numbers 1:1 links the chapter firmly to the exodus and prior wilderness narratives. God instructs Moses to carry out a census on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt. The chronological note is one of a series of dates that provide continuity and structure to the story of the tribes’ wilderness journey. The date especially connects the events in Numbers to Israel’s escape from Egypt. Much as using AD and BC marks the birth of Jesus as the center of Christian history, the chronological notes in the Pentateuch ground Israel’s subsequent history in the exodus event.

Numbers 1:1 also establishes the geographical setting of the narrative: the wilderness of Sinai. This setting constitutes another tie to the overarching pentateuchal story. Exodus 19:1-2 explains that the Israelites came to the wilderness of Sinai; their departure from Sinai will be narrated in Numbers 10:11.

But if verse 1 indicates continuity with what has gone before, it also signals an important movement in the story. The chronological notes demarcate particularly significant events: the first Passover (Exod 12:3), the arrival at Sinai (Exod 19:1), the construction and dedication of the tent of meeting (Exod 40:2, 17), the second Passover (Num 9:3), and the departure from Sinai (Num 10:11). The reader is thus alerted: what comes next matters. Moreover, except for the geographical references in Exodus 19:1-2, the texts consistently identify the story’s setting as Mount Sinai, a set place, immobile, a mountain. With the construction and dedication of the tabernacle, the locus of divine revelation shifts. YHWH will now encounter the people at the tabernacle, which Jacob Milgrom has aptly deemed the mobile Sinai (Milgrom 1990, 4). No longer bound to the mountain, the people can prepare to leave for the promised land.

The topic and wording of the census in Numbers 1 also link the book to its larger pentateuchal context. The census of the tribes recalls the last enumeration of Jacob’s descendants, when the family consisted of seventy members (Gen 46:8-27; Exod 1:5; Olson, 1996, 9). Given the connections between Numbers 1 and the previous books of the Pentateuch, the chapter, and, indeed, the whole of Numbers may be read against the background of the blessing in creation, the promise to the ancestors, descent into Egypt, deliverance from bondage there, and the revelation at Mount Sinai.

Numbers may also be read as a distinct literary unit. The initial chapters are key to the structure of that unit. The book is organized in the first place by generation. Numbers 1–2 introduce the first part of Numbers, which concerns the exodus generation, and its ultimate disobedience and failure. The second census, Numbers 26, which counts the next generation, introduces part two (Olson, 1985). Another, geographical principle organizes Numbers into three parts; Numbers 1–2 establish the setting of the first of those units, when Israel is encamped in the wilderness of Sinai (Num 1:1–10:10; see introduction, pp. 5–6). Within that initial unit, Numbers 1–2 comprise the first half of a subsection describing the organization of the tribes, in this case, of the twelve secular tribes. Chapters 3–4 will recount the ordering of Israel’s priests and Levites.

Divine instruction followed by Israelite fulfillment of God’s commands provides the organizing principle for chapters 1 and 2. In Numbers 1, God’s speech (vv. 2-16) includes the command to engage in a census of the tribes (vv. 2-4) and names precisely the tribal representatives who are to help Moses with the task (vv. 5-15). Here, as in such late texts as 1–2 Chronicles, the term ancestral houses (bet ʾabot) refers to the tribes. In earlier materials, father’s house (bet ʾab) denotes the extended family.

Verses 17-19 report Moses’s and Aaron’s obedience; the results of the census are then spelled out in formulaic detail (vv. 20-46). Verses 47-53 appear to have been inserted by a later Priestly redactor in order to emphasize the special role of the Levites, who are exempt from the census of lay tribes. These verses introduce multiple themes taken up more fully in chapters 3 and 4. A third divine speech comprises the bulk of chapter 2. YHWH again instructs Moses, this time with Aaron, on organizing the tribes. The final verse reports their obedience (v. 34).

The narrative overlay of divine speech and Mosaic compliance is thin, so much so that in chapter 2, the end of YHWH’s speech is not clearly demarcated. Instead, the chapters are dominated by the lists that give the book of Numbers its name (1:5-15, 20-46; 2:3-32). The lists are highly formulaic, leading Baruch Levine to propose that tabular accounts have been taken up and minimally adapted into prose (Levine, 1993, 126; 259–66). Still, the divine command/human fulfillment structure is significant. Regardless of the rebellions that take place later in the book, the beginning of Israel’s organized tribal life is characterized by obedience.

The similarities between Numbers 1 and 2 bear comment. Tribal lists enumerating military strength dominate each chapter, and the lists are worded and organized similarly. Both chapters portray the tribes readying themselves to move out under God’s command. The chapters, however, do have different emphases: Numbers 1 focuses on the numerical strength of Israel’s militia; Numbers 2 sets out the organization of the camp and the order of the march.

Exegetical Analysis

Verse 1 quickly establishes the story’s setting and time frame, the wilderness of Sinai thirteen months after the exodus, and introduces the two main characters of the book, YHWH and Moses. One month has elapsed since the account of the construction and dedication of the tent of meeting. Presumably the reader is to understand that this month was the time in which YHWH revealed the laws found in Leviticus. Now the tent sanctuary is set up, and the laws have been given. It is time for the people to prepare to move from the mountain where they have encamped for nearly a year.

The tent of meeting from which God speaks to Moses is a key symbol of God’s presence in Israel’s midst. It is the place of encounter, of divine self-revelation. The multiple traditions about the tent of meeting or tabernacle will be discussed more fully in the commentary on chapters 3–4. For now, what matters is its mobility and its importance to the Priestly writers who compiled Numbers.

The chapter begins with divine speech; YHWH commands Moses to take a census (literally lift the head) of males of military age. Census-taking is well attested in the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and the Levant, including Israel; documents from Mari, Ugarit, and elsewhere refer to census lists or data. David is supposed to have been divinely punished for conducting a census (2 Sam 24:9-15), but other texts report without censure Judahite kings taking a census (2 Chron 24:9; 17:14-18; 25:5; see also Luke 2:1).

These censuses were not like modern efforts to collect demographic data on entire populations; rather, they entailed lists of names or count totals of populations or subsections of the population. Such population counts functioned as the bases for taxation, rationing, drafting laborers for state projects, and mustering troops. The census in Numbers 1 serves a military purpose. Moses is to count not the whole population but only males twenty years and older who are able to go to war. That is, he is to assess the military strength of the tribes as part of Israel’s preparation to face the dangers of a wilderness march, and especially as Israel looks ahead to the battle to conquer Canaan.

According to Numbers 1, taking a census involves using tribal representatives to gather data from the various clans (mišpahot) in each tribe, which in turn have been collected from each of the households (bet ʾabot) comprising the clan. A representative of the administrative district then collects totals from each of the villages in the district. Documents from Mari record similar processes, as does an Israelite ostracon (i.e., writing on a potsherd, the ancient equivalent of scrap paper, published by Izhaq Beit-Arieh, 1987, 105–8).

Comparisons with extrabiblical documents do not attest to the historicity of the census lists in Numbers. In fact, census documents from surrounding cultures raise questions about the historical plausibility of Numbers 1–2: all of the historical census documents derive from settled states with more centralized governments than the tribes are depicted as having.

Verses 2-4 echo passages in Exodus in a way that exposes a redactional problem in the narrative. A divinely given case law found in Exodus 30:11-16 instructs Moses that whenever there is a census (literally, when you lift the head), each person enrolled must pay a half-shekel as ransom. Exodus 38:25-31 assumes that the poll tax collected from a census had provided the quantities of silver required for building the tabernacle. That census enrolled every male twenty years and upwards. The total (603,550 males) is the same as the total of males reported in Numbers 1:46. Since the census in Exodus took place before the building of the tabernacle as a prerequisite for its construction, and the census in Numbers 1 occurs one month after the tabernacle is dedicated, the two references cannot refer to the same event. It is only slightly more plausible to imagine that the authors wanted to say that Moses counted all of his troops twice within a few weeks. Most likely, editors have taken up the tradition of a census found in Exodus and repurposed it here. That is, they used it to demonstrate Israel’s military strength and hence its readiness for the wilderness march. Doing so, they left a glitch in the story line.

In the next section, verses 5-15, a detail-oriented God provides Moses with a list of the twelve tribal representatives who are to help him conduct the census. Study of the list has focused on two issues. The first is the relationship of this passage to the many other biblical enumerations of the twelve tribes or their eponymous ancestors, the sons of Jacob. The lists vary. C. Wulf identifies over twenty variant lists in the Bible (Wulf, 1962, 700). Some include Levi among the twelve tribes (e.g., Gen 29:32–30:24; 35:22-26; 46:8-27; 49:3-27; Exod 1:1-5). Lists in 1 Chronicles 2–3 and 6:54-80 maintain the number twelve by counting both half-tribes of Manasseh. This first list and most other lists in Numbers omit Levi but count both of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, in order to maintain a total of twelve tribes (e.g., Num 1:5-15, 20-43; 2:3-31; 7:12-83; 10:14-28; 13:4-15; 26:5-51; 34:16-29). The order of the tribal names also varies from list to list.

Scholars have long recognized that the description of the twelve tribes of Israel and their descent from Jacob’s sons is an idealized and simplified schema. Descriptions of the kinship ties within and among the tribes express social realities more than biological facts. Variations in tribal lists have intrigued scholars as possible evidence of changes in tribal relationships. Unfortunately, there is so far no consensus of the relative dating of the lists. Moreover, some variations may reflect the different ways in which some of the lists functioned before they were included in their current contexts, rather than the period from which they emerged. Literary factors may account for other variations. Efforts to use the lists as sources to learn more about the earliest period of Israel’s life on the land have thus been inconclusive. More recently, scholars have focused on their literary and theological significance. (For more discussion of the tribal lists, see Olson, 1985, 79.)

Numbers 1:5-15 seems to rely on the birth narratives in Genesis 29:31–30:24 and the related tribal list in Genesis 35:22-26. It begins with the tribes attributed to Leah’s five sons; the sixth Leah tribe, Levi, is deliberately excluded. Next come the Rachel tribes: Ephraim and Manasseh, traditionally held to be descendants of Joseph’s two sons, and Benjamin. The last four tribes, Gad, Asher, Dan, and Naphtali, were considered offspring of Jacob and his concubines, that is, secondary wives.

Mary Douglas, an anthropologist noted for her work with biblical texts, persuasively argues that the tribal lists in Numbers function to offer an inclusive vision of Israelite identity. At the time Numbers was compiled, some sectors of the Persian colony of Judah wanted to define the boundaries of the community narrowly, excluding from membership Samaritans (descendents of the northern tribes) and even those Judahites whose families had not gone through exile. Especially in light of tensions between Jerusalem and Samaria, the former capital of the northern kingdom, Douglas argues that the repeated listing of all twelve tribes in the stories of Israel’s history asserts an inclusive identity (Douglas, 1993, 35–41).

The setting and date of the names is the second issue that has dominated study of verses 5-15. The list appears to have had an independent existence prior to its inclusion in Numbers. Scholars have variously sought to bolster arguments for an earlier or later dating of the Priestly materials by showing that the names derived from a particular time period. Unfortunately, it is not possible to establish the origin or date of the list; the data are too mixed. The lack of a Yahwistic element in the names and the preference for certain patterns that were most common during the early monarchy support an early date. Other characteristics of the list suggest that it is late; some names are of a type that was popular after the exile. Moreover, while most of the names are found only in Numbers, the ones that occur elsewhere in the Bible appear primarily, though not exclusively, in Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles, which are very late texts.

Examining the literary-theological function of the names is likely to prove a more fruitful direction of study. Dennis Olson’s work is particularly helpful in this regard. The list of tribal representatives’ names does not vary in Numbers 2, 7, and 10, chapters that are part of the story of the exodus generation that dies in the wilderness. Except Caleb and Joshua, none of the names of the older generation are included in the census found in Numbers 26 (Olson, 1996, 163). The repetition of the names in the first part of the book and their absence from the second part stress the movement from the older, rebellious generation, which dies in the wilderness, to the new generation, which obeys and thus lives.

YHWH’s instructions to Moses (vv. 2-16) are followed by three verses that show Moses’s and the Israelites’ complete obedience. Verses 17-18 report that Moses and Aaron thoroughly carry out God’s instructions. The chronological note emphasizes that they conduct the census the same day they are told to do so (v. 18). Verse 19 is a formulaic assertion of their obedience.

The census results are given in verses 20-46. The tribes appear in the same order as the list in verses 5-15, except that Gad has moved up to the third slot. In Numbers 2, Gad and Simeon will be part of the contingent led by Reuben. The compilers have moved Gad up to follow Reuben and Simeon to prepare for that (1:24-25).

A great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the huge numbers given in the census report. A population that boasted over 600,000 adult men would include an equal number of adult women, an equal number of underage boys, and an equal number of girls, implying that Israel was comprised of more than 2.4 million people. That figure is impossibly large. The idea of over two million people escaping Egypt and living together in the Sinai wilderness is inherently implausible; it exceeds the total estimated population of the combined kingdoms of Israel and Judah at their height. It is also far more people than the Sinai desert could possibly sustain. Moreover, as Eyrl Davies demonstrates, the large figures, though repeated in chapter 2, are incompatible with other Priestly population figures in Numbers. For example, Numbers 3:43 indicates that