At eighty-nine verses, Numbers seven is officially the second longest chapter in the entire Bible (behind Psalm 119).
Unlike Psalm 119 though, most of it is painfully identical, too. Over twelve days, the individual leaders of each of the twelve tribes bring their offerings to the Tabernacle.
Each of the offerings are identical: one silver dish and one silver bowl (each filled with fine flour), one gold pan of incense, one bull, one ram, one male lamb a year old, and one male goat.
Then, each leader brought the same ingredients for the peace offerings: two oxen, five rams, five male goats, five male lambs that are each one year old. Like I said—a lot of the same.
You can’t help but question the point of enumerating each and every little detail twelve times in a row. After all, wouldn’t it have been much easier for God to say “All twelve tribes brought the same sacrifices over twelve days”?
The only thing I can even begin to consider as a possibility is that God wants to show each tribe doing their part. In this case, it’s a more expanded view of passages like Exodus 35:29, which simply says “Everyone…whose heart moved them…brought a freewill offering to the Lord.”
But you lose something in that verse that you would later gain in passages like Numbers 7.
For instance, when I read Numbers 7—I mean actually read it, not just skimming over the top—I read about individual names. Nethanel, the son of Zuar, leader of the sons of Issachar. Eliasaph, son of Deuel, leader of the Gadites. Pagiel, the son of Ochran, leader of Asher’s tribe.
Admittedly, these names don’t mean a whole lot to me. I’m not Jewish, I’m not part of their tribes, and I don’t live in a time period where this genealogy would be spiritually relevant.
But they meant something to the Jews in the Old Testament who could trace their lineage back to this generation that kickstarted their entire race.
A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to take my parents and my family on a trip to Europe. One of the stops was at the American cemetery in Normandy, where a lot of the soldiers are buried who died in the landings at D-Day.
As I walked through the graves with my dad and my children, I didn’t recognize a single name. We talked about how this person was from Nebraska, or this one was from Arkansas. Some where even from Texas, not far from where we now live.
On the surface, those names meant nothing to me. But because of their sacrifice and what they gave up so that we could have the life we have now, their names meant everything. I didn’t have to know who they were because I know what they stood for. For me and everyone else who walks through that cemetery, that’s enough.
I imagine there are generations of Jews later who may not recognize these names personally, but they had better respect what those leaders did and what they meant to their people. Even if they weren’t perfect, they still devoted themselves to the service of God at a time when it wasn’t particularly easy to do so.
And for all those generations of Jews later who would build on what they started, that should be enough.
