Numbers: 1-36

Numbers! The engineer in me was excited to discover God's mathematical construct of the universe. I was looking forward to seeing the greats: origins of Newton's laws of physics, pi, the golden ratio, perhaps even the grand unified theory! Alas, I didn't even get a simple quadratic equation. The book of Numbers finds our heroes on their way to the promised land, led by Commander Moses and High Priest Aaron. God orders a series of censuses (thus "Numbers") and a number of challenges spring up along the way. Will our heroes make it to the land promised them by the Almighty? Tune in to find out...

The Good:
The book of Numbers opens with a command from God for Moses to start counting his people and dividing them into families or "clans". Only men were counted, and only those older than 20 (I could speculate as to why the women were left out, but I'll refrain). Most civilized peoples have some form of a census today; the ability to keep track of your people is good. We also see a few repeat themes from Leviticus: the quarantine of those with skin diseases, discharges, or anyone who came into contact with a dead body. They even took precautions with any soldier that killed another during a battle. Their knowledge of medicine was primitive, but they did the best they could since God hadn't yet invented antibiotics. We also see some repeats of legal procedures from Leviticus pertaining to paying back, with damages, those you've wronged. It seems ours isn't the only litigious society known to history. There are also a few laws dealing with murder, but the eye-for-an-eye approach sanctioned here wouldn't fly these days.


The Bad:
Unfortunately, Numbers picks up where Leviticus left off. There are enough animal sacrifices requested/performed to make even the Man vs. Food guy sick. A number of laws would never be passed today, especially the ones that treat women like lesser citizens.

Numbers 5 lays out, in detail, what a man is to do should he suspect his wife of adultery. He is to bring her to the priest (with a small court fee, of course), where the priest will make her drink a mixture of holy water, dirt, and the ink used to write her "curses" on a scroll. If no harm comes to her, she will be deemed innocent. If she miscarries a baby and her abdomen swells, then the curse has successfully punished the adulteress. Allow me to point out that a man need only suspect his wife of straying to put her through this test. The last line of the chapter says it all: "The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin." This sounds an awful lot like the witch trials of old, no? A suspected witch would be shackled and thrown into a lake. If she was indeed a witch, she would rise up and save herself. If she was, in fact, innocent, she would die, but her name would be cleared. I have no idea what effect this water/dirt/ink concoction would have on a woman, but shouldn't an all-powerful and merciful God be able to skip a potentially dangerous test to prove one's guilt?

Numbers 30 explains how not even a woman's vow to God is allowed without the express consent of her father or her husband.

Numbers 9 has God explaining that his people are to celebrate Passover during a specific time of year. Everyone loves holidays - how could this be a bad thing? Anyone who doesn't celebrate and has no good excuse, they are to be "cut off from their people". "YOU WILL HAVE A PARTY AND LIKE IT. ALSO, PAY ME A COVER CHARGE."

Numbers 36, following the previously-established themes of bloodline importance, instructs women in control of their own land (due to having no brothers or living male relatives) to marry within their fathers' clans so that each separate inheritance would remain with each family, never changing hands between clans. God would prefer incest to confused property lines (the girls go on to marry their cousins - sorry George Michael, you were born a few centuries too late).

Numbers 14, when the Israelites hear about a civilization ahead of them that seems powerful enough to destroy them, they cry out in fear that "Our wives and children will be taken as plunder," clearly well-versed in God's rules of war. Later, in Numbers 31, they conquer a civilization and proceed to kill the men, children, and non-virgin women while keeping the virgins and splitting them among their citizens with the rest of the "spoils". We all may be God's children, but some of us were created to be slaughtered.

Numbers 25 shows us what happens when the Israelites try to intermingle with an inferior subset of humanity. When they started sleeping with the "enemy", God commanded that they were to die, and one of Aaron's priest sons killed two of them with a spear, which ended the plague that God had sent to punish them for these misdeeds. God killed 24,000 of his own favorite children to prove his point.

Numbers 15 quite clearly states that anyone working on the Sabbath should be stoned to death by the community. Goodbye college football.


General Thoughts:
Numbers is a long book, and in it we see many themes.

1. Nepotism: Again we see that Moses, his brother Aaron, and Aaron's children have been given powerful priest positions in the community. Only these people can speak with God, and everyone else must take them at their word. When God needed to choose someone to take some of the people's anger away from Moses, he didn't come out and tell the people - he had each family give Moses a staff, and whichever one "bloomed" overnight would determine who the next leader would be. With little surprise, Aaron's staff was the lucky one. The system was created in such a way that the priests were to collect the offerings and keep them for themselves. In legal proceedings, no matter who won, the priest always won. Every message from God was filtered through them, and they happened to gain personally at every turn.
2. Hyper-specificity: God seems fickle, to say the least. There are times when he is broad, and others when he is incredibly hyper-specific. In Numbers, he goes so far as to make sleeping arrangements for each clan. He also determines that the Levites are to be responsible for the care of the temple, and assigns each family to a specific task. At one point (Num 15:37) he even creates a dress code so that his people will wear tassels on their clothing to remind them not to disobey. That's right...the Israelites had flair.
3. Strict communication rules: God has a way to do things and you're not to fuck with it. On at least six separate occasions (in the book of Numbers alone) God reminds people (through Moses and/or Aaron) that anyone who approaches the temple, sees something they shouldn't, or interferes with those responsible for maintaining it will be put to death immediately. God is, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible to anyone but Moses's family.
4. Forced happiness: God doesn't like complaining. 
• In Num 11, when people started complaining, God sent fire to burn their camp, and only Moses's begging convinced Him to put the fire out. 
• When they went on to complain about not having any food, God, in his anger, agreed to send them meat: "You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month — until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it." God took the "If you like smoking so much, why don't you just smoke the whole pack right now?" approach to parenting because his children selfishly asked him for food during their life-long journey through the desert. He then proceeded to strike them with a plague for eating the meat he sent. This was clearly upsetting to the people, so when Aaron and sister questioned God about why he only speaks through Moses and not them...
• He gave Miriam leprosy and condemned her to quarantine for a week (Num 12). 
• In Num 20, the people asked for water. God told Moses and Aaron to break open a rock that would provide water for the people and their livestock, and because of their audacity to ask for water while traveling through the desert, God promised that none of them would live to see the land at the end of the journey on which He was leading them. 
• Shortly after, the people complained about a lack of bread and water. In response, God sent poisonous snakes to kill them. Only after Moses prayed did God remove the snakes instruct Moses to create a bronze snake statue that would cure anyone who was bitten by having them look at the statue (Num 22).
5. Dissenters: When the people started to wonder why God was putting them through this arduous journey, God answered by promising them that they would never live to see the land he was leading them to (Num 14). He would make them wander for 40 years until the last of them died, their children suffering all the while. He then cast "plague" on the two scouts who had come back from their trip with doubts about their ability to take over the villages ahead (it was super effective!). Two chapters later, when some of the Levites began to question their role as de facto slaves in Moses's plan, he told them to gather in the morning while burning incense, and God would choose one of them to be holy - God proceeded to open the earth to swallow them and their associates with Moses reminding everyone that only Aaron and his family were allowed to burn incense for the Lord (despite his instruction to them to do so). God went on to kill 15,000 more people for questioning his decision to kill those that questioned him in the first place.
6. Israelites vs. the World: This chapter puts to bed any doubt about which child is God's favorite. Despite the flourishing of Noah's other descendants elsewhere in the world, God is determined to lead one part of the family tree to a specific piece of land no matter how many of his other children must die in the process. He leads them from village to village, guaranteeing victory when the odds seem stacked against them, and instructing them to murder and pillage as they go. There is even a brief introduction to the only person not in Moses's family that has a direct line to God. This man is asked by a sitting king to bless his own people and curse the Israelites, but he agrees to be God's double agent (really) and continues to bless the Israelites despite the king's promise of riches for cursing them. As thanks for being God's voice and representation in this matter, he was killed.
7. God even goes so far as to threaten his own people for not taking out an entire civilization:

          Num 33:55

‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them.’

          "KILL THEM OR I'LL KILL YOU."


10 Second Version:
Here's the short version of where we are now: God created the universe, all animals and mankind, killed almost everything save for some animals and one family of people, sent one set of the survivor's descendants into slavery for 400 years, saved them from slavery, and now demands constant thanks and praise for it through groveling and the smell of burning animals. The one man he chooses to talk to and his family relayed all the rules from the creator, they need food and money from the rest, and if the people don't listen, they will be punished beyond belief. God has a piece of land with their name on it and he will guide them through the desert for many years to "their" land and He will help them slay their distant cousins that got there first. Also, anyone who set out on the journey originally will be killed before they reach their destination for asking for food and water along the way. With me so far?

Rating: 2.5/10
While the census is in fact a good idea, it doesn't redeem the rest of the book that's full of strange requests and needless death. It could make for a decent movie, but I would need Michael Bay for the action, Scorcese for the drama, Jack Nicholson as an old, scary, and devious Moses, Matt Damon as his priestly-but-shady younger brother Aaron, and Heath Ledger channeling his Joker-wanting-to-watch-the-world-burn performance as God. "Wanna see a magic trick?" ::destroys world::

Open Questions:

1. First and most importantly: If God is commanding Moses to count his people and even taking the trouble to give him the names of the people that are to help him, why not just tell him how many people there are? Surely it took some time to count 600,000 people - what of the boys who turned 20 during the count, or those that died before it was completed?
2. Why would people need to be quarantined from camp for skin diseases and the like? Couldn't God have cured them or told them how to make medicine?
3. Num 7: "When Moses entered the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the atonement cover on the ark of the covenant law. In this way the LORD spoke to him." How did the LORD speak to him before the tent of meeting was built?
4. Why did God use a fiery cloud to communicate to the camp when it was time to move on, yet need Moses and Aaron to translate his every other desire?
5. In Num 27, why did God need Moses to pass the torch to Joshua? If Joshua is to take over, surely God would be able to tell him directly.
6. In Num 13, why would God order Moses to send a scout team to the next village? God must know what lies ahead and he can prepare His people with what information (if any) they need.
7. It's never explained why God a) chose one branch of a family tree at the cost of cutting off all others, b) has a specific piece of land in mind for that branch (despite the constant promises of "milk and honey"), or c) needed them to endure hundreds of years of slavery, torture, and needless death to get there.
8. Is God's law regarding a woman's infidelity (Num 5) indisputable proof of God's support of abortion?

Next up: Deuteronomy!