As the title of this book suggests, Numbers is all about…well, numbers. That’s the whole point of at least the first four chapters. If you fast forward to Numbers five, that’s when they stop counting and start talking about purity laws. Honestly, you’ll probably think you’re back in Leviticus again. It’s eerily similar.
So why does God need this number? Those who have read ahead will most likely remember that David was severely reprimanded for doing this exact same thing. In 2 Samuel 24, David instructs Joab to take a census. And even Joab—the same man who had no problem killing Uriah the Hittite—tried to talk David out of it.
The reason for that discrepancy is that David did it from a position of pride. He wanted to know how many people were under his command for his own vainglory. When God tells Moses to do it, the number is purely for organizational purposes. How many people were actually involved in the Exodus?
Numbers starts out after the Tabernacle is built. They’ve received the instructions regarding the sacrifices, the priesthood is installed, and all the various laws regarding cleanliness are known. This is a people that is prepared to march towards Canaan.
The reason that’s important to remember is because not everyone actually made it to Canaan.
If you compare the number of people that started on this journey (which is 603,550, according to Numbers 1:46), and compare it to the amount that make it to Canaan in Numbers 26:51 (601,730), you’ll see that the number actually shrank by a couple thousand.
What happened? God promised in Leviticus that if they stayed faithful to Him, He would protect them, they would multiply, and they would never want for anything. The simple fact that there are less people at the end signifies that something bad happened along the way.
To be fair, “something bad” is a bit of an understatement. Numbers twelve records the watershed story—the spies entering Canaan and returning a bad report to the rest of the group.
Because of this disobedience, God says that everyone who is over 20 at the time of the spies’ report will die in the wilderness. 1 Corinthians 10 goes into more detail by saying that while everyone left Mt. Sinai, not everyone made it to Canaan because of disobedience.
That’s why the census matters. What God is showing us is the price of disobedience. It cost them a few thousand people numerically, but what it really cost them was an entire generation of people. Tens of thousands fell because they were not ready to follow God’s command.
Am I?
