Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Purpose of Numbers

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Purpose of Numbers

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Track: 01

Dictation Name: RR181A1

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Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting and his truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou who art king of kings and Lord of Lords, maker of heaven and earth and all things therein, art still mindful of us, that nothing is too great or nor too small for thee, and so we come, our Father, to cast our every care upon thee, knowing thou carest for us, to commit all our todays and our tomorrows into thine omnipotent hands. We thank thee that, though the nations rage and take counsel together, and conspire against thee, thou art on the throne, and it is thy will that shall be done, and thy kingdom alone that shall endure. Make us zealous in thy service, joyful in thy word, and confident in thy victory. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture this morning in Number 1:1-4. We begin our studies in Faith, Law, and History. Faith, Law, and History, and our first study is the purpose of the book of numbers. Numbers 1:1-4. “And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies. And with you there shall be a man of every tribe; every one head of the house of his fathers.”

The book of Numbers is very clearly not a popular book of the Bible, but the fact that people don’t enjoy reading Numbers does not make it any the less important. Most people are not interested in things because they are important, but because they please them, so they will go to things in the Bible that please them, and forget all the rest that God has to say.

According to Phillip J. Budd, Numbers makes a major contribution in four areas. First, Israel is presented as a community on the march. It has an ordained goal, and to attain that goal it must learn to depend on God and give itself to God’s purposes. Then second, the goal of Israel’s journey is a land, something material. This land is not Israel’s choice, but God’s. At one point, Israel rebels against God’s choice. One prominent modern Israeli has said that Moses couldn’t have been very good because he missed the only part of the Arabian Peninsula that had, well, he missed all the parts that had oil and choose the one part that didn’t. Well, in God’s plan, this was the place for His people. The goal is a very material one, and that material goal is inseparable from religious or covenantal life. God does not separate the material and the spiritual.

Then third, all the way through Numbers, a very important issue is the question of authority. What constitutes legitimate authority? What constitutes lawful power? What kind of authority makes a community stable and strong? Well, these are important questions. Then fourth, Numbers also deals with the nature and the consequence of rejecting truth authority. What does it do to a community? Of course, it deals with two kinds of rejection. Moses is rejected and the God that stands behind Moses. The thirty-eight years in the wilderness which followed were God’s rejection of the people. Only the next generation would be allowed to possess the Promised Land. To possess the land is a blessing. It is, in fact, a culminating blessing. Psalm 37:9-11 tells us, “For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.”

This promise, of course, that the meek, the tamed of God, shall inherit the earth, is restated by our Lord on the Sermon on the Mount. But we can add still more to Budd’s list; a fifth emphasis, the census ordered by God. In verses 2-4, and of course the rest of the chapter deals with a census as do subsequent chapters.

In 1 Chronicles 21, David orders a census and God judges the nation for it. The purpose of David’s census was similar to the census ordered in Numbers 1. Why was God displeased with it? David’s purpose was to assess his military strength in humanistic terms. God’s purpose was to bring home to the people that, despite all God’s miracles and providential care, they still had to fight for the land. The census was a reminder to them that it wasn’t all going to be miracles. There were going to be responsibilities; battles.

According to Exodus 30 and Exodus38:26, there had been an earlier count of all the men by reckoning the number of half shekels paid when the pole tax was taken. This was taken of all men who were heads of households. There was, thus, an accurate count of all men, age 20 and older, but this reckoning was in terms of all males, not in terms of tribes and families. It was only a total of men. The numbering now is by their armies or by their companies, or by their tribes or clans. It was made by Moses and Aaron with the help of men representing each tribe.

Then, there was a sixth aspect to Numbers which is important. This is one of the books of law, and yet, in any modern sense, there is very little law in Numbers. A book named after a census is still included in the law section of the Bible. The census had a function comparable to the law, to further God’s justice, and this was to be done by the defense of the covenant law and people.

At one time, in fact, during much of the history of the United States, the religious enumeration of American churches and people was very much a part of the United States Census Bureau’s work. We’ll touch on that again next week. But the point is important. Law requires also military power, police power, and the two cannot be separated, and this is what modern man, in his imagination, seeks to do. Women and children, and probably aged and dependent men were not included in the census. The purpose of the census in the biblical account is not a numerical total, but a list of those who can be depended on to defend the country, exercise authority, and pay taxes. All others were beneficiaries of their responsibilities, and also the victims of their failures.

As a result of the moral failure of the men of Israel, all had to remain in the wilderness for thirty-eight years more. Eiler{?} said of this fact of family organization and responsibility, “The principles of the Mosaic law of families are the following. Each family forms a self-contained whole which, as far as possible, is to be preserved in its integrity. Each Israelite is a citizen of the theocracy only by being a member of a certain clan of the covenant people. Hence, the value of genealogical trees. The representation of the family descends in the male line, and therefore, marriages between the various tribes and families are, of course, allowed. On the contrary, if the male line has died out, the female line receives independent recognition for the preservation of the family in order that no family in Israel may perish, a thing which is regarded as a special divine judgment. The separation of family possessions is based on the separation of the families themselves.” We’ll be coming back to that in subsequent weeks. On the husband’s death, desertion, or failure to provide, or to respect and abide in the covenant, the woman then exercised authority. Authority and responsibility in the Bible are inseparable.

A Scottish commentator, Walter Riggins, has called attention to an important aspect of the Bible that comes through very clearly in the opening verses of Numbers. First, the initiative always belongs to God. He is not dependent on our faith to act for us. He is the Lord, and we are His creation. Second, our relationship to God is riveted in history, not in speculation nor in man’s planning. The realities of our common world govern God’s plan for us. His revelation is made in the history He creates to the people He has made. This is why the Bible, and a book like Numbers in particular, is dull or difficult reading for a great many people. It is rooted in history, whereas man, in his thinking, prefers to think non-historically. He prefers fairy tales to history. In history, we are born, live, and we die. We do not remain to dominate the scene. We are God’s ordained work and purpose for a particular time, and then we pass on, but man rebels against this God-created mutability.

When I was a student at the university, there was a professor who, although he did not title his course so, had a course in literature, which was really on mutability, and he made no bones about that, and he said that mutability, change and decay, is the great subject of literature from Greece and Rome to the present, but modern man is abandoning that theme because he is so in rebellion against that idea, he does not want to confront the fact of change and decay, of death, of mutability. But it’s God-ordained. God has a purpose for us. We are to be pilgrims in this life. Here, there is no permanent abiding place, and it is this aspect of Numbers that people don’t like. It does stress the fact that God can reject a people, and that men either serve God or they’re put on the shelf.

Numbers is an historical book because it is first and last, also theological. It has a sharp awareness of time. The days of Israel’s older generation are numbered, and they are confined to the wilderness. The Promised Land is closed to them because they are closed from God in their foolishness and sin. As a result, there is very little advance. They mark time. Their advances are not for their sakes, but for the next generation.

Time is therefore, an important part of the book of Numbers. It should not surprise us that Moses, in Psalm 90, speaks of God’s providence, the very fragile nature of human life, and the shortness, the brevity of time. In fact, Psalm 90 is a prayer on the subject. Life is brief and uncertain, and to spend it in indifference to or rebellion against God is to live under wrath instead of blessing. There must be, instead of waywardness, a full submission to God. Psalm 90 echoes Numbers and Deuteronomy. It is Moses’s reflection on those things.

It is interesting that when the book of Psalms was put together, it was put together perhaps by Ezra, and in the Hebrew, it is divided into five sections, comparable to the five books of Moses, and Numbers is the fourth book, and Moses’s Psalm 90 begins the fourth book of Psalms. This may or may not be a coincidence, but Ezra probably was making the parallel because Psalm 90 does echo the book of Numbers.

Alexander said of this Psalm that it could be regarded as the heart or the center of the whole collection, indeed, as the model upon which even David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, formed the glorious body of psalmodic literature. So that, Numbers is the model and the inspiration for Psalm 90 and it was in terms of Psalm 90 that David, and Asaph, and Solomon wrote the Psalms.

Although Numbers gives us an account of the chosen people, which makes clear that in them, there was no good thing, the stress is not on Israel’s sin and foolishness, but on God’s holiness. This continues the emphasis of Leviticus, that God is holy, and therefore, His people must be holy. Numbers depicts, with sharp clarity, the stupidity and evil of man’s self-will, and the patience and holiness of God the king.

One final note, it is an interesting thing that those eras which have given attention to the book of Numbers, and to the book of Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and Chronicles, in other words, to history in the Bible, have also been the ages when historical writing has flourished. At least in English history, that has been the case. So that an interest in God’s history gives us a perspective on human history and men then become more interested in understanding the movement of God and of men and nations in our time. So, to study a book like Numbers is very important. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee that in thy word, thou dost speak to our needs and not to our appetites, to what we must know, not what we would like to know. Give us grace to hear thee speak. Give us grace so to walk day by day, that we are always open to thee and closed to evil. Grant us this we beseech thee, in Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Ancient Israel was obviously a patriarchal society, but modern Judaism traces {?} female {?}. When did they change?

[Rushdoony] They changed in the Christian era. Exactly when, we don’t know, but Israel was a patriarchal society when it was faithful. That’s an important point to make. Even as in the western world, in Christendom, society has been patriarchal when men have been faith, when men have been godly, then they have been able to mold their families and their societies, and there is a correlation between the decline of one and the other.

[Audience] Well, there is a tendency in our society toward the matriarchal. The courts grant mothers more rights than fathers, and we now have the phenomenon of female heads of families.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the rise of a matriarchal society has been the subject of a great many books, especially in the pre-World War 1 era. In fact, they paved the way for what we have now. There were some who theorized that, before the rise of patriarchal societies, primitive man lived in matriarchal societies, and there was a rational behind that. It was myths, of course, but the basis of that myth was a very obvious one. When the paternity of a child is not assured, when no one can be sure who actually fathered a child because there is so much promiscuity, then very clearly, it isn’t the man who happens to be living in the family that dominates, but it is the woman. This is why, as some scholars have pointed out, a great many black families are matriarchal. Well, of course, the idea that there was originally cavemen coming out of a primitive matriarchal promiscuity, and then the men seizing power, the truth is that a matriarchal society is a society in collapse, in decay, in radical decay.

So, the scholars who propounded the theory of matriarchy, all Darwinian, of course, and Hegelian, paved the way for feminism and for the breakdown of the family, and a poll of a couple of years ago indicated that, among young couples, a very considerable percentage of men do not feel sure that the children are theirs, something like one of out of six. Well, that indicates a breakdown in a society. It indicates a very, very serious loss of authority by men. The illegitimacy rate among blacks is well over fifty, I believe it’s over sixty percent now, and it’s in the mid-twenties and climbing among whites. Now that’s very conducive to matriarchy. A man no longer counts. So, in ancient Israel, you had times of degeneracy when the patriarchal character was shattered, and you had it also in every culture known to man, at various times. Yes?

[Audience] The statement that the responsibility of the present generation to prepare for the next generation is going to come as a shock to the federal government because they’re in the process of stealing from the next generation by borrowing.

[Rushdoony] Yes. One of the very interesting facts is that a sense of time, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, a future stretching out indefinitely, is a Christian fact, a biblical fact. As a culture decays, it refuses to look into the remote future. Some years ago, there was a very brilliant black anthropologist in Africa who studied the languages of a variety of black peoples, and concluded that there was no sense of a real future, only a short range one, thirty days in many instances. His thesis now is savagely contested by a number of other black and white scholars who feel it’s racist, so it’s almost dangerous to refer to his works now, but his works rested on very careful scholarship.

Now, if you think, not in terms of God, but in terms of man, you don’t like to think in terms of death, or the fact that there’s a time coming when you won’t be here. In the Middle Ages and in the Reformation era, and for some time afterwards, the worst death a man could die was to go suddenly. Now that’s regarded as the most desirable. What they relished was a slow death whereby all the family could be summoned, and it was regarded as a marvelous event, because he would give them instructions. He would talk about the past. He would bless the children. He would transfer something to them, self-consciously, and that was regarded as the ideal way to go. Very recently we’ve decided that a sudden death is best, and a closed coffin so we won’t have to look death in the face. So, we’ve had a dramatic change here. Part and parcel of that is the matter of debt living. Debt is something remote, as far as payment is concerned, the never-never plan, the English call it. It’s never going to come, the pay off. That’s the illusion, and so nations figure they’re going to come up with an answer before the day of reckoning. They’re going to solve every problem, and this is why, of course, particularly in the west, whereas in the Marxists countries they have a planned society, in the west we have, and the distinction is self-consciously made, a planning society. We constantly improvise in order to postpone what used to be called the inevitable, because we believe sooner or later, we’re going to postpone it forever, everything, including death and the pay off on debts. Yes?

[Audience] Including {?} modern medicine.

[Rushdoony]Yes. Yes. I was told awhile back of, earlier this year, of a woman in her nineties who was put through a series of operations to preserve her life, that cost the family close to fifty thousand dollars. What was wrong with letting her die? She died when it was all over anyway, and they were saddled with debt. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

We thank thee, our Father, that our times are in thy hands, that our lives here are a preparation for the greater life, that all our days in thee and all eternity is in terms of thy holy purpose and calling, and a blessing from thy hands. Our God we thank thee. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.