Rebellion Again - Numbers 25 & 26

Even though the last 3 chapters have been about the adventures of Balak and Balaam blessing and trying to curse Israel, the people of Israel were just living in the land minding their own business. They would have had no idea what was going on and that made me think about all the times that God works on our behalf that we don’t know about. And just to be clear, some of those times the work he’s doing isn’t what we would have chosen, we could even see it as a negative, like what happened with my family recently. Looking back I can see all the ways that the Lord intervened to arrange the circumstances that allowed for that to happen and even though I know that this was what He had planned, I still hate it and it’s all just what I see in hindsight, I had no idea that it was leading up to this at the time. It’s like he threaded a hundred needles to ensure this outcome and I’m so mad about it and my heart is broken but I take comfort in the fact that if this is His plan, then he’s already worked it out for our good, like we are promised.

In the end Balaam didn’t curse Israel like Balak wanted but apparently, according to tradition and the IM Balaam did give an outgoing message to Balak on how he could still make it work even though God already blessed Israel. Balaam told Balak that God only favored Israel when they were righteous to Him, so if Balak could get the Israelites to act wickedly and turn away from their God then Balak could beat them because they would not have God’s favor. So Balak implemented a plan to infiltrate the people of Israel and get them to act wickedly so that their God would not help them in battle, it’s a pretty ingenious plan, and it works. TB says that the people of Moab, which was Balak’s people, would have been friendly to the Israelites and neighborly, but the Israelites started participating in the people of Moab’s religious events, including “sacrifices to their gods.” TB notes that this had happened earlier but with the previous generation and that there is no record to this generation learning that this wasn’t allowed even though I think that at some point they would have learned in the last 40 years.

The Israelites are celebrating these other gods and they “began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab…. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.” God commands Moses that all the chief leaders of each tribe were to be executed “that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.” TB says that this might not actually call for their execution because hanging and strangulation were considered humiliating anciently and the common method of execution at the time was impaling, which sounds very gruesome. But apparently it was execution God called for because Moses chooses not to execute all the tribal leaders like he was commanded but instead only “slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor.” So instead of killing the tribal leaders, Moses just tells the leaders to kill those who were involved. At some point a plague starts as a result of the people’s disobedience. The event culminates when an Israelite man walks a Midianitish woman in front of Moses at the tabernacle. TB says that the wording of this event means that the man took this woman to his tent and while having sex with her, Phinehas, Eleazar’s son, Aaron’s grandson, took a spear (probably from one of the Levite guards) and went into the tent and “thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly.” It would make sense that he did this while they were in the act of sex because otherwise the logistics just don’t make sense.

Because Phinehas did this, the Lord “hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel,” and the plague ended after killing 24,000 people. This was enough to appease God and apparently give Phinehas’ line the next position of leadership within the Levites. Aaron was the first high priest, then Eleazar, now with this action, Phinehas was in line to take it over from his father. God also curses the Midianites because of their worship of these other gods and their corruption of Israel. It seems to me that Moses’ wife and father in law Jethro were Midianites and if I remember correctly, Jethro held the priesthood, so the Midianites generally seemed to have fallen out of the true worship of God within that last generation as well.

In the beginning of Numbers there is a census for the army, and now 40 years later there is another one so that the army could be organized as they prepare to go to war to take Canaan. Again, Levi is not counted because they are not going to support to fighting effort, they are going to serve in the religious capacity. It’s also interesting to consider that an entire tribe would be taken out of the fighting strength because in war you want as many fighters as you can get, so God taking them out of the military for religious service is another indicator of God saying, “I’m in charge of your victory, it doesn’t matter how many fighters you have, you will win or lose based on what I make happen.” It’s a very interesting and unusual strategy. All in all they have about 600,000 military age fighting men, which is a lot. Interestingly, at the end of chapter 26 it says that not a single man who was numbered this time was also included in the original census 40 years ago, except for Joshua and Caleb. Even if at the original census a man had been 20, he would have been 60 years old this time and even though that would have probably been too old to fight, he still would have been accounted in the census, and still been alive but it’s interesting that this generation seems to have all died prematurely. Very interesting.