The purpose of this tally of the adult males 20 years of age and older was to identify those who would serve in battle when Israel entered the land (v. 3).11Entrance into the land should have been only a few weeks from the taking of this census. Moses had taken another census nine months before this one (Exod. 30:11-16; 38:25-26), but the purpose of that count was to determine how many adult males owed atonement money. The census described in Numbers 1 excluded the Levites whom God exempted from military service in Israel (vv. 49-50).
The number of fighting men in each tribe counted was as follows.
The total was 603,550 men (v. 46).12Since each figure ends in zero it appears that Moses rounded off these numbers. God was already well on the way to making the patriarchs' descendants innumerable.
"It is in the context of developing a military organization for war that the Levites are assigned their tasks in relation to the tabernacle. In a sense, their military assignment is the care and transportation of the religious shrine. Num. 1:49-53 clearly outlines the requirements for the militaristic protection of the tabernacle by the Levites."13
The total impression of Israel's God that this chapter projects is that He is a God of order rather than confusion (cf. Gen. 1; 1 Cor. 14:40).
The phrase "the Lord spoke to Moses"(v. 1) occurs over 80 times in the Book of Numbers.14
The twelve tribes excluding the Levites camped in four groups of three tribes each on the tabernacle's four sides. The Levites camped on all four sides of the tabernacle but closer to the sanctuary than the other tribes (v. 17).
This arrangement placed Yahweh at the center of the nation geographically and reminded the Israelites that His rightful place was at the center of their life nationally and personally.
"The Egyptians characteristically placed the tent of the king, his generals, and officers at the center of a large army camp, but for the Israelites another tent was central: the sanctuary in which it placed God to dwell among his people. From him proceeds the power to save and to defend, and from this tent in the middle he made known his ever-saving will."15
"This picture of the organization of Israel in camp is an expression of the author's understanding of the theology of the divine presence. There are barriers which divide a holy God from a fallible Israel. The structure of the tent itself and the construction of the sophisticated priestly hierarchy has the effect, at least potentially, of emphasizing the difference and distance between man and God. This is valuable to theology as a perspective, but requires the compensating search for nearness and presence. The . . . author sought to affirm this in and through his insistence that God is to be found, tabernacled among his people, at the center of their life as a community."16
The tribes to the east and south marched ahead of the tabernacle, whereas those on the west and north marched behind it while Israel was in transit. The tabernacle faced east (i.e., "orient") to face the rising sun, as was customary in the ancient world.
"According to rabbinical tradition, the standard of Judah bore the figure of a lion, that of Reuben the likeness of a man or of a man's head, that of Ephraim the figure of an ox, and that of Dan the figure of an eagle . . ."17
God evidently arranged the tribes in this order because of their ancestry.
"It will be seen from this arrangement that the vanguard and rearguard of the host had the strongest forces--186,400 and 157,600 respectively--with the smaller tribal groupings within them and the tabernacle in the center."18
Moses did not explain the relationship of the tribes that camped on each side of the tabernacle to one another. Some scholars believe they were as the diagram above indicates while others feel that Judah, Reuben, Ephraim, and Dan were in the center of their groups.19
"Further, the placement on the east is very significant in Israel's thought. East is the place of the rising of the sun, the source of hope and sustenance. Westward was the sea. Israel's traditional stance was with its back to the ocean and the descent of the sun. The ancient Hebrews were not a sea-faring people like the Phoenicians and the Egyptians. For Israel the place of pride was on the east. Hence there we find the triad of tribes headed by Judah, Jacob's fourth son and father of the royal house that leads to King Messiah."20
". . . the Genesis narratives devote much attention to the notion of the east,' a theme that also appears important in the arrangement of the tribes. After the Fall, Adam and Eve, and then Cain, were cast out of God's good land toward the east' (3:24; 4:16). Furthermore, Babylon was built in the east (Ge 11:2), and Sodom was east' of the Promised Land (13:11). Throughout these narratives the hope is developed that God's redemption would come from the east and that this redemption would be a time of restoration of God's original blessing and gift of the land in Creation. Thus, God's first act of preparing the land--when he said, Let there be light' (1:3)--used the imagery of the sunrise in the east as a figure of the future redemption. Moreover, God's garden was planted for humankind in the east' of Eden (2:8), and it was there that God intended to pour out his blessing on them.
"Throughout the pentateuchal narratives, then, the concept of moving eastward' plays an important role as a reminder of the Paradise Lost--the garden in the east of Eden--and a reminder of the hope for a return to God's blessing from the east'--the place of waiting in the wilderness. It was not without purpose, then, that the arrangement of the tribes around the tabernacle should reflect the same imagery of hope and redemption."21
Note the recurrance of a key word in the Pentateuch in verse l: toledot.
"For the first time after the formative events of the Exodus deliverance and the revelation on Mount Sinai, the people of Israel are organized into a holy people on the march under the leadership of Aaron and Moses with the priests and Levites at the center of the camp. A whole new chapter has opened in the life of the people of Israel, and this new beginning is marked by the toledot formula."22
God exempted the Levites from military confrontation with Israel's enemies. He did this because He chose the whole tribe to assist the priests, Aaron's family within the tribe of Levi, in the service of the sanctuary (vv. 5-9). The Levites' duties were to guard the holy things from affront of foolish people and to care for the holy things.23
"The Levites ministered to the priests (3:6) mainly in the outward elements of the worship services, while the priests performed the ceremonial exercises of the worship itself."24
God sanctified the Levitical service. Any Israelite who was not a Levite who did this work was to suffer execution (vv. 10, 38).
On the first Passover night in Egypt God set apart all the first-born of the Israelites, man and beast, to Himself (vv. 12-13). He did this when He chose Israel as His first-born (i.e., privileged) son. From that day to the one this chapter records the Israelites had to dedicate their first-born sons for sanctuary service and their first-born cattle as sacrifices. Now God selected the Levites and their cattle in place of the first-born. God bestowed this privilege on the Levites because they stood with God when the rest of the nation apostatized by worshipping the golden calf (Exod. 32:26-29).
"The power of a people lies in the birth of its progeny, and so a great value was placed on the first child to be born--a value so great, in fact, that in many nations the eldest son was sacrificed to the gods."25
The tabernacle responsibilities of each group were as follows.
The total number of Levite males from one month old and up was 22,000 (v. 39) making it the smallest tribe in Israel by far.26The fact that this figure does not tally with the totals in verses 22, 28, and 34 may be the result of a "textual corruption,"27in particular a "copyist's error."28Verse 28 probably read 8,300 originally.
"3 (Hebrew sls) could quite easily have been corrupted into 6 (ss)."29
Moses then numbered all the first-born males in the other tribes from one month old and up. There were 22,273 of them (v. 43). God took 22,000 of the Levites in their places (v. 45). He specified the redemption of the remaining 273. That is, the Israelites had to pay five shekels to the priests for each of these men (vv. 46-48). This freed them from God's claim on them for sanctuary service (cf. 1 Pet. 1:18-19).
"Theologically the section as a whole explores the theme of God's holiness. Viewed in one way the priestly hierarchy is a means of protecting Israel from divine holiness. The introduction of another sacred order between priests and people emphasizes the difference between the fallibility of man and the perfection of God. . . . Viewed in another way the hierarchy constitutes the recognized channel through which God brings stability and well-being to his people."30
"The Levites, the keepers of Yahweh's dwelling place, were to surround the Tabernacle. They were particularly close, both in location and function, because they represented the firstborn of Israel whom Yahweh spared in the Exodus (3:12-13, 44-45; 8:5-26). It was their responsibility to attend to the sanctuary (chap. 4) for it is ever the ministry of the eldest son to serve his father and protect his interests."31
Moses did not arrange the three Levitical families in the text here in the order of the ages of their founders. He arranged them in the order of the holiness of the articles that they managed.
The Kohathites--who included Moses, Aaron, and the priests--were in charge of the tabernacle furniture including the ark. God told them how to prepare the various pieces of furniture for travel and how to carry them. The priests wrapped the articles of furniture, except the laver, and then the other Kohathites carried them. Touching a holy piece of furniture or even looking at one would result in death (vv. 15, 20). The oils, incense, and the flour for the daily meal offering were the special responsibility of Eleazer, the heir to the high priest's office (v. 16).
God also explained the responsibilities of the Gershonites (vv. 21-28) and the Merarites (vv. 29-33).
There were 8,580 Levites who were fit for service (v. 48). A Levite had to be at least 30 and not more than 50 years old to participate in these acts of ministry (cf. 8:23-26).
"The truth is that all work in the kingdom of God is royal service, however unostentatious and, from the human standpoint, lowly and insignificant."32
"The sense of order and organization already observed in this book comes to its finest point in this chapter. Again, we observe that the standard pattern in Hebrew prose is a movement from the general to the specific, from the broad to the particular. Chapters 1-4 follow this concept nicely. . . . The chapters have moved from the nation as a whole to the particular families of the one tribe that has responsibility to maintain the symbols of Israel's worship of the Lord. Each chapter gets more specific, more narrow in focus, with the central emphasis on the worship of the Lord at the Tent of Meeting."33
An emphasis in this book appears at the end of this chapter again (v. 51). Moses carried out the Lord's commands exactly (cf. 1:54; 3:33-34; 4:42; Heb. 3:5).
