Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Second Census

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Second Census

Genre:

Track: 49

Dictation Name: RR181AA49

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Year:

Let us worship God. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God, for ye have not received the Spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee for thy blessings in the year past and thy providential care. Thou art so often good to us, our Father, when we cannot be good to ourselves, and by thy mercy, thou dost lead us through the difficult places. We give thanks unto thee for thy protecting care. Guide and prosper us, we beseech thee, in the days to come, that we may be able to serve thee all the more freely and ably, and that we may glorify thy holy name. Give us victory over the powers of darkness. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Numbers 26:1-65. Our subject: The Second Census. Numbers 26. “And it came to pass after the plague, that the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, saying, Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from twenty years old and upward, throughout their fathers' house, all that are able to go to war in Israel. And Moses and Eleazar the priest spake with them in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho, saying, Take the sum of the people, from twenty years old and upward; as the Lord commanded Moses and the children of Israel, which went forth out of the land of Egypt. Reuben, the eldest son of Israel: the children of Reuben; Hanoch, of whom cometh the family of the Hanochites: of Pallu, the family of the Palluites.” And skipping to verse 12.

“The sons of Simeon after their families: of Nemuel, the family of the Nemuelites: of Jamin, the family of the Jaminites: of Jachin, the family of the Jachinites.” Then 15.

“The children of Gad after their families: of Zephon, the family of the Zephonites: of Haggi, the family of the Haggites: of Shuni, the family of the Shunites.” Then skipping to verse 19.

“The sons of Judah were Er and Onan: and Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Judah after their families were; of Shelah, the family of the Shelanites: of Pharez, the family of the Pharzites: of Zerah, the family of the Zarhites.” Then verse 23. {3:42.7}

“Of the sons of Issachar after their families: of Tola, the family of the Tolaites: of Pua, the family of the Punites.” And verse 26.

“Of the sons of Zebulun after their families: of Sered, the family of the Sardites: of Elon, the family of the Elonites: of Jahleel, the family of the Jahleelites.” And then 28.

“The sons of Joseph after their families were Manasseh and Ephraim.” Verse 33.

“And Zelophehad the son of Hepher had no sons, but daughters: and the names of the daughters of Zelophehad were Mahlah, and Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.” Verse 35.

“These are the sons of Ephraim after their families: of Shuthelah, the family of the Shuthalhites: of Becher, the family of the Bachrites: of Tahan, the family of the Tahanites.” Verse 38.

“The sons of Benjamin after their families: of Bela, the family of the Belaites: of Ashbel, the family of the Ashbelites: of Ahiram, the family of the Ahiramites.” Then verse 42.

“These are the sons of Dan after their families: of Shuham, the family of the Shuhamites. These are the families of Dan after their families.” 44

“Of the children of Asher after their families: of Jimna, the family of the Jimnites: of Jesui, the family of the Jesuites: of Beriah, the family of the Beriites.” 48

“Of the sons of Naphtali after their families: of Jahzeel, the family of the Jahzeelites: of Guni, the family of the Gunites.” Verse 52.

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Unto these the land shall be divided for an inheritance according to the number of names. To many thou shalt give the more inheritance, and to few thou shalt give the less inheritance: to every one shall his inheritance be given according to those that were numbered of him. Notwithstanding the land shall be divided by lot: according to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit. According to the lot shall the possession thereof be divided between many and few. And these are they that were numbered of the Levites after their families: of Gershon, the family of the Gershonites: of Kohath, the family of the Kohathites: of Merari, the family of the Merarites.” Then verse 63.

“ These are they that were numbered by Moses and Eleazar the priest, who numbered the children of Israel in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho. But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron the priest numbered, when they numbered the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. For the Lord had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.”

This between the exciting chapters we have just considered, dealing with Balaam and Balak, and the next chapter, one of the most important, on the laws of inheritance as they relate to women, seems to be a rather dull chapter, and many commentators barely give it space, but it is very important and there is some very, very important points that are brought out. This is a census, this time, of the fighting men in Israel as Israel prepares for the invasion of Canaan.

We are told in verses 53-55, that none of these men, other than Moses, Caleb, and Joshua were in the first census, made by Moses and Aaron at the time of Sinai, shortly after they left Egypt. This one was conducted under the authority of Moses and Eliazar.

To give you the rounded figures for the twelve tribes, Reuben went from forty-six to forty-three; Simeon from fifty-nine to twenty-two thousand. These are numbers in thousands. Gad from forty-five to forty; Judah from seventy-four to seventy-six; Issachar from fifty-four to sixty-four; Zebulun from fifty-seven to sixty; Manasseh thirty-two to fifty-two; Ephraim forty to thirty-two; Benjamin thirty-five to forty-five; Dan from sixty-two to sixty-four; Assher from forty-one to fifty-three; and Naphtali from fifty-three to forty-five. The total at Sinai of fighting men was 603,550, and now it’s down to 601,730. In other words, the judgments of God had taken their toll, so that the number of fighting men had decreased by almost two thousand in a generation, on top of that. Except for Caleb and Joshua, and Moses, all the mature men who had left Egypt were now dead. God’s judgment had been pronounced upon them. The tribes which lost were Reuben, Simeon, Gad, Ephraim, and Naphtali, five clans in all. The gainers were Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, Benjamin, Dan, and Assher, seven clans in all. The major loss was sustained by Simeon, which had been most involved in the fertility cult apostasy described in Numbers 25. It was now the smallest clan. The major growth was in Manasseh which increased over sixty percent.

Now, in verses 52-56, we are given the rules for the division of the land once it is conquered. First of all, the larger the tribe, the clan, the more territory it would receive. This census thus had both a military purpose and also to provide a basis for the division of the land. Second, the general area each clan would receive would be determined by drawing lots. The boundaries would be determined by these two factors.

In verse 33, we read that Zelophehad of the clan Manasseh had no sons, but he did have five daughters. In chapters 27 and 36 their inheritance is cited, and of course, we will deal with chapter 27. And nothing better indicates the stupidity and ignorance of feminists than this chapter, nor their ignorance of the Bible.

Now, normally, the oldest godly son who was also responsible and capable, received the double portion in an inheritance. Since, however, the premise of biblical inheritance laws is the capitalization of God’s kingdom, the godly child takes priority whether male or female. Caleb clearly made his daughter, Acsah, his heir. We’ll deal with this next week at length.

In verses 58-62, we have the census of the Levites. In this instance, instead of a remuneration of fighting men of twenty years and older, all males from a month upward are numbered, twenty-three thousand in all. They received no allotment of land, but they were settled instead in the cities and scattered among the twelve tribes and clans. They were to provide the religious, moral, and educational leadership in Israel.

There was a third factor in the division of the land. Each area was the be named after one of the twelve sons of Jacob. That is, after the original head of the clan. There was thus, a territorial integrity between the tribes, and a clan loyalty established, so that the Bible does see the importance, not only of the family but of the larger family entity.

This census not only looks ahead to the occupation, but it is a reminder of the past. In verse 61 we are told, “And Nadab and Abihu died, when they offered strange fire before the Lord.” Levi had the privilege of receiving the tithes and offerings of Israel, of which a tenth went to the priests, according to Numbers 18:25-32. To remind them of the necessity for faithfulness and obedience, they are here reminded again of the judgment of God on those who offend Him, and are presumptuous, especially among God’s clerisy, His educational and intellectual leaders.

The reminder in verse 65 that, apart from Caleb and Joshua, and Moses would die before the invasion of Canaan, none of the adults who left Egypt were still alive tells us that God keeps His word. His judgment felled a generation and prevented them from entering into Canaan. This did not ensure the character of the younger generation, but it does mean that God keeps His promises, whether they be to bless or to curse.

Now we see, as Robert Watson said a century ago, of this chapter, “The past receding, the future advancing, and God, the soul abiding link between them.” History collapses into existentialism, when and where God and faith in Him are forgotten. The binding between past, present, and future is God, the Lord, and His providential purpose. Our humanists are a generation behind the academicians, because they still talk about a purpose of one-world order, and this or that humanistic goal, but in the universities, professors of history are often prefacing their course by the statement that “History has no meaning, no direction, no purpose.” The binding between past, present, and future is God the Lord and His providential purpose, and without that faith, not only is a sense of history lost, but also a sense of causality.

The author of a recently published book held that it was wrong to blame prostitutes for the spread of AIDS among heterosexuals. An academic journal blamed Christians, not homosexuals, for the AIDS epidemic. Now these are serious statements by academic authorities. This is, to put it mildly, a loss of any sense of history and causality. Well, not surprisingly, instruction in causality is not a part of modern education. The younger generation, unless they’ve learned it from their parents, do not believe in cause and effect. Our modern humanists believe that the world and history are what man makes them to be, not what God ordains, and it’s only the professors who still have ties to the past who deal with causality. One arrogant current professor, Richard Stern, has titled a recent book, The Invention of the Real, and that’s his thesis from beginning to end, a very favorably reviewed book. I’m happy to report it did not sell, but of course, he was a pure Hegelian, and for Hegelianism, the rational is the real. What the mind of man conceived, that is, the intellectual, is alone reality. Well, Dr. Stern’s book is full of absurdities, all in line with the modern loss of reality.

The emphasis on the allocation of the land by tribes or clans is important. Both in the form of their encampment in the wilderness, and soon in the allocation of land, clan integrity is obviously stressed. To what extent tribal loyalties had been broken or damaged in Egypt, we do not know, except that the clan survived more or less intact. Community is important to God, and as a result, on the human level, it must accompany community with God. Community among men and then community with God go together. The census in the proposed allocation of the land, alike stress the community of the family and the clan.

Joseph Parker, about a century and a half ago, made a telling comment on this census, “God is always numbering. He may number to find out who are present, but in numbering to find out who are present, He soon comes to know who are absent. He knows the total number, but it is not enough for Him to know the totality. He must know whether David’s place is empty, whether the younger son has gone from the father’s house, whether one piece of silver out of ten is lost, whether one sheep out of a hundred has gone astray. We are all of consequence to the Father, because He does not look upon us through the glory of His majesty, but through the solicitude of His Fatherhood and His love. ‘Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones,’ we are told. ‘It were better for a man that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea than that he should offend, wound the heart of one of these little ones.’ So, everywhere we find God concerning himself with individuals, with single families, with solitary lives, stooping to marvelous condescension, sweeping the house diligently until he find the one piece that was lost. We need that kind of thought in human life. Living would be weary work without it.”

Our Lord declares the very hairs of your head are all numbers. This is not hyperbole. It is intended to be taken very literally. What scripture tells us in many, many ways, among them this census, is of God’s particularity as well as His universality. False religions are very prone to stress universality with glittering generalities, all of which are without substance, because the particular is ignored.

When I was a student, I had a course which dealt with various religions, in fact, two courses, and I read a great deal in the various so-called sacred books of the various religions. In fact, I went about it so seriously that I went through all of Max Miller’s many, many volume translations of all the world’s religions writings. It was appalling. There were no people in them. In the Bhagavad-Gita of India, there are some people named, but they’re never persons. They just represent vague entities. People do not exist. They do not count in these religions. The only sacred writing of any religion that I’ve encountered in which there is a person, is the Vietnamese book, The Song of Thu, and what it does is to give us one character, a woman, who goes through more hell than is conceivable that any one person could go through and survive, and the whole point of the book is, this is the way the world is, this is the way the gods are. They hate humanity.

Many pretentious thinkers despise the Bible and find it uncomfortable reading because of God’s precise, very precise, and total particularity. It is precisely this particularity that is the glory of our faith. There are people in the Bible, and it is this particularity that offends many thinkers. They want to think high, abstract and noble thoughts. All other religions are full of glittering abstractions, but the Bible deals with persons, because it tells us that God is one God, three persons, a personality, and we are created in His image. So instead of the universe being an abstraction and a meaningless one, so that all life is meaningless, we have total particularity. It is precisely this particularity that is the glory of our faith, and we read in Matthew 10:42, “And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” That’s a very particular God, precise about the details of our lives. We are likewise assured that God’s judgments are particular and total.

Well, the twelve tribes or clans had been encamped around the Levites with the sanctuary in the center. There were three tribes to a side. All the tribes under the leadership of Judah increased, whereas all those under Reuben’s leadership had decreased. The Judah clan was coming to the fore in its predestined leadership, and Reuben was fading. This census was the beginning of the preparation of the second generation for the conquest and occupation of Canaan. They would soon be tested and in Deuteronomy, we have a summation with some expansions of God’s law, a summation to ready them for dominion. The military census reminded all the adult males of the coming war. No culture can survive which does not defend itself. Otto has defined, in one of his papers, decadence as the inability to defend yourself, and no culture can long last if it is not missionary minded. If it does not believe that its culture is worth extending to other peoples. Neither can any culture survive if it does not recognize that some practices cannot coexist with the living culture. That radical tolerance of our time to every form of evil, to pornography, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and much more, is not a mark of nobility, but of decadence. Both history and society exact death penalties. The question is: Where will societies apply the death penalty? Against religion and morality or against evil? Death marks history, because history is the record of fallen man’s struggle against God, seeking total independence from God. Except for death, the result of sin, man would go on forever defying God and attempting to create His towers of Babel. The humanistic world order is defiance of God, but for the godly, the time and death factor is an incentive to do what we must do without delay. Even our Lord declare, “I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day, the night cometh when no man can work.”

The census was thus a preparation for action. It alerted the men of military age to the necessity for battle. Let us pray.

Our Father, make us more than conquerors in Jesus Christ, that we may become the shapers, the molders, the makers in Christ, of all things, bringing every sphere of life and thought into captivity to Christ. In His name we pray. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Did intermarriage take place between members of different tribes?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it did, and that will be dealt with in the last chapter of Numbers. So, there were intermarriages. Yes?

[Audience] Regarding the author you referred to, The Invention of Reality, this is just really an effort to simplify reality.

[Rushdoony] It’s to make it man-made. That’s the goal. Yes, they want a history that is totally man-made, manufactured by man.

[Audience] Certain aspects of reality are, today, ignored.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, you see, Immanuel Kant began this when he insisted that knowledge of the objective world, the world out there, is unknowable, that we cannot know the reality of this pulpit, or of the building, or of the natural world around us because everything, he said, is based on sense impressions reporting to the mind, so the mind has them secondhand. That created a crisis for science when Hume first called attention to this, but Kant said We need not concern ourselves about that. The world is an invention of the mind of man. It is a creation of the mind of man, not of God. So, for Hegel, next in line then, the rational was the real. What the intellectual said is reality became reality, and this stream of philosophy has created the modern academic and intellectual world. Now some scientists, of course, are still not with it, and this is why in the liberal arts, especially in philosophy and some other fields, they look down on them, because they’re still thinking in terms of a world of hard and real objects, but you’re getting men in the sciences who are now moving with this stuff. So, we have for generations, locked up ordinary people who think they’re Napoleon or have delusions, but the intellectual can tell us all is a delusion and we, in our rational and logical thinking, alone, know reality, but we haven’t locked them up. Meanwhile, they are destroying the world. Yes?

[Audience] You’ve been saying that these academicians have no purpose in history. It would seem to imply that they perceive no underlying unity, and what I’m wondering is, if these people become more mature and influential, how they’re influence is going to break up what remains of the cohesion of the humanist movement and totally obliterate it.

[Rushdoony] That’s exactly what is happening. This is why Lord Keynes when he was asked about the consequences of his economic theory, shortly after the end of World War 2, what in the long run would happen pursuing his economics, and his response was, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” In other words, it was short-term thinking. So, the existentialist mode of thinking which says, “Only the moment is real,” has been permeating one area of academic thought after another. So, we live in a world which believes there is no future, only an eternal moment, and so it is destroying its own future. Yes?

[Audience] Is there any instance in history since the Bible where governments have been able to conduct an accurate census. For the people, the U.S. census is off by, they estimate 10%, the Chinese communists, when they started in on China, they missed it by hundreds of millions.

[Rushdoony] A lot of censuses of our time are guesswork. We are given, for example, in various record books, the population figures for Zaire and Zambia, and Berma, and these are laughable. They are only guesswork. The Biblical census was by clans and the head of families, a very careful report from the grassroots on up to one person above them, until it reached Eliazar and Joshua. So, it was not a census from the top down. The purpose of the modern census is increasingly statist. It’s hard for us to realize that the census prior to World War 2 was a very interesting historical census, and copies of the old census records are not easy to come by. They would be two-volume works which gave the population figures, state by state, but it also gave a breakdown in terms of religious affiliation. You had the history. In fact, sometimes most of one volume of the two would be the history of the every religious group, including some very small groups, with say, a hundred and fifty-two members, but there would be a full history. Then, it would be carefully divided in terms of the rural, and small town, so on segments, so that you had a good indication of the nature of the country. The census was important, not for the IRS or somebody in Washington in some bureaucratic basis, but for religious leaders and students to study the character of the country, for businessmen to know what kind of market it was, what percentage were in such-and-such areas. It was a totally different concept of the census, and we have taken and abolished all of that. We have a totally different census. Yes?

[Audience] Well, up until very recently, the only record was religious, and it makes you wonder about the figures given for the casualties of World Wars 1 and 2 when all the churches and temples, and so forth were destroyed. How can anybody estimate who died and how many died?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Church records and religious records of various sorts have been where they are still available, the best resource of historians, and because England has suffered less than some countries, it is a treasure trove for historians. Yes?

[Audience] In your book, Foundations for Social Order, you were discussing the particularity and also the universality of God, and how in a quest for an alternate universal, certain philosophies veered toward universality at the expense of particularity, and others the other way around. I was wondering if you could give, in a nutshell, the pitfalls that each of the extremes could lead to and then how our faith in a triune God puts both together to our benefit?

[Rushdoony] Yes, I’ve dealt with it at length in The One and the Many, and our time is running out, so I’ll have to do it very briefly. Those culture which stress universality at the expense of particularity end up with a monistic faith in which the individual doesn’t count and the state is everything, and you have a total tyranny. Those which stress particularity at the expense of universality end with a culture in which all you have is anarchy. There will no cohesive tie, and the culture collapses as Greek culture did under the impact of the cynics. Then, the only culture which makes possible an equal emphasis on unity or universality and particularity in the individual is the biblical, because of the doctrine of the trinity, of the equal ultimacy of the one and the many. God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, three persons, all equal so that there is both diversity and unity, equally important in the trinity, and a Christian culture alone stresses both. All other religions founder on it. It used to be said when I was a boy, in philosophy books, that the basic problem with philosophy was the problem with the one and the many. Now they don’t even mention it for the simple reason they cannot solve it apart from the Bible, apart from Christian faith, so they’d rather act as though the problem does not exist than to admit there’s only one place where the answer can be found.

Well, our time is virtually up. Let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we rejoice in thee and in thy providential care, and we pray, our Father, that by thy mercy and grace, we may be empowered to turn this generation around, and to make of a dying world a living one, that in Christ Jesus, all things may be made new. 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