Seder 129: Numbers 32---Distributing the Transjordan Territory

 During the fortieth and final year of Israel's time in the wilderness, the Israelites conquered some territory on the eastern side of the Jordan River (Num 21).  Seeing that this land was good for grazing livestock, the tribes of Gad and Reuben requested that they be able to settle in some of this land (Num 32:1-5).  

Since some Israelites would end up settling there, it wasn't wrong in itself to make such a request.  But these tribes were asking for something more.  They asked to just stay east of the Jordan and not cross the river with the rest of the tribes to conquer Canaan (verse 5).  In making such a request, they were thinking of their own interest above that of the nation as a whole.  

This situation has a parallel in the book of Genesis.  When Lot was looking for more grazing land, he was drawn to area of Sodom and Gomorrah, not taking into account the spiritual consequences of a move to Sodom.  Similarly, the tribes of Reuben and Gad were thinking of their economic interests above the welfare of the nation (compare Num 32:1 with Gen 13:10).  

To their credit, however, these tribes were receptive to the correction they received from Moses.  They agreed that they would settle the Transjordan territory only after they assisted the other tribes in conquering Canaan.  

The tribes of Reuben and Gad were not the only ones that would receive some territory east of the Jordan.  Numbers 32:33 mentions that part of the tribe of Manasseh also would occupy some land east of the Jordan.    

Was the tribe of Manasseh involved in the negotiations with Moses described in Numbers 32?  It's possible.  The Bible sometimes adds information at the end of a narrative in this fashion.  The Samaritan Pentateuch makes this explicit, mentioning Manasseh along with Reuben and Gad throughout the chapter.  

On the other hand, the situation with the tribe of Manasseh seems to have been different.  The Bible indicates that there was territory east of the Jordan taken by that tribe specifically (Num 32:39-42), and so Moses in verse 33 may have been making official something that had already been agreed upon.  Moreover, most of the tribe would be settling west of the Jordan.  There is no indication that this tribe was asking not to have to cross the river.  They would be settling on both sides of the river in an area where the river was not a major barrier.  In this way they might be able to help unify the nation.  

There is also an interesting theory, one going back a thousand years or more, speculating that people from the tribe of Manasseh had been living in that region for a long time, since the time of Joseph or shortly thereafter.  

Joseph's son Manasseh, who was born and grew up in Egypt, had an Aramean concubine (1 Chr 7:14) who was the mother of his son Machir.  The speculation is that Machir, who had a son named Gilead, may have gone to the Gilead region and started a settlement there, during a time when his family was influential in Egypt and Egypt was the major power in the region.  The activity of the tribe of Manasseh described in Numbers 32:39-42 may refer to what had happened centuries before, perhaps along with later efforts 40 years after the Exodus to solidify the hold of some clans of Manasseh over that territory.  Manasseh's population did increase substantially in the second census.  Were some of the additions from people who had been living in the Gilead region all along?  I don't know if these speculations are true, but they are certainly interesting.  Michael Morales devotes an excursus to this theory in his commentary on Numbers.

Seder 102: Numbers 1---Everybody Counts

 The book of Numbers begins early in the second year of the Exodus.  The Israelites have been camped at Sinai for around 11 months, and in a few weeks they will break camp and travel toward the Promised Land.  

On their journey they will be organized as a military camp.  God authorizes a military census of males 20 years old and up----the soldiers---and selects a man from each tribe to supervise the count.  What an honor it would have been to have been named by God for this role!  There are a few familiar names among the list in Num 1:5-15.  For example, Judah's representative, Nahshon, is an ancestor of Jesus (Ruth 4:20).   Elishama, Ephraim's representative, is Joshua's grandfather (I Ch 7:26-27).  Many of the names are theophoric---i.e., they contain a name of God, like El, Shaddai, or Zur.  

The Israelites carried out the census "as the Lord commanded Moses" (v 19).  This refrain, which we have seen through the final chapters of Exodus, continues through the first ten chapters of Numbers.  (Commentator Dale Brueggemann counts 19 times that the phrase occurs in Num 1-10.)  

The numbers reported from the census in our English translattions raise questions for us.  We will first begin to question our translations in Num 3, when the number of firstborn males reported is an order of magnitude too low to be in sync with the large numbers in Num 1.  I have written about these issues in a previous post.

From a theological standpoint, these details are not so important.  The big message is that God has blessed Israel greatly, carrying out his promises to the patriarchs by greatly multiplying their descendants.  Moreover, God knows the name of each Israelite, and each Israelite matters.

The tribe of Levi is not involved in the military census but will have its own count.  Levites have their own important responsibility to care for and guard the tabernacle (v 53).  

In a sermon at Church of the Messiah on May 14, 2022, Kyle Kettering looked at all the important biblical events that occur in wilderness settings.  The wilderness is a place where people can tune out extraneous noise and hear the voice of God. 

Seder 62: Estimating the Number of Israelites on the Exodus

During the time of Joseph, Jacob's extended family migrated to Egypt.  Some 70 members of that extended family are mentioned in Gen 46:8-17, almost all of them being male.  So perhaps the  total number of people who went to Egypt was something like 150.

The family prospered in Egypt and grew quickly (Exod 1:7), consistent with God's promises to Abraham (Gen 15:5).  At some point the Egyptians used the success of the Israelites as an excuse to enslave them, but their numbers continued to grow (Exod 1:20) despite Egyptian attempts to limit their population.  

The Israelites were in Egypt for several generations.  1 Chron 7:23-27 lists eleven generations from Joseph to Joshua, for example---counting Joseph as generation zero, Ephraim as generation 1, etc.   (The three-generation Levi-Kohath-Amram-Moses sequence summarized in Exodus 6 probably skips a number of generations, as biblical genealogies sometimes do.)

Our English translations tell us that "about six hundred thousand men" left Egypt on the Exodus, which would give an Israelite population of a few million at that point (Exod 12:37).  Exodus 38:26 lists a more precise figure of 603,550 adult males, consistent with Num 1:46.  

Some other scriptures call our English translations into question, especially when we take into account the data we have about populations in that area and region. 

In particular, Num 3:43 gives the number of firstborn males at least a month old as 22,273.  With the total number of males presumably being over a million, we would expect the number of firstborn males to be something on the order of 10 times bigger than 22,273.  

Another question arises in Exod 23:29-30, where God says that he will drive the Canaanites out of the land slowly, since Israel's population isn't sufficient to drive them out all at once.  But if there actually were millions of Israelites, then they would have had plenty of people to fill the whole land immediately.  

Another passage that suggests a smaller population is Deut 7:1-7.  Verse 1 lists seven peoples in the land and calls them "seven nations more numerous and mightier than you."  Verse 7 states, "It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples." 

More problems are apparent when we start considering what we know about geography and populations in that region.. (Michael Heiser gives good coverage of the problems in Episode 271 of his Naked Bible Podcast.)  

Here is one example that he mentions.  Before crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land, the Israelites "camped by the Jordan from Beth-jeshimoth as far as Abel-Shittim in the plains of Moab" (Num 33:49).  Since those two locations are about 7 miles apart, the camp could have covered up to 49 square miles.  But putting a population of two to three million people in that space would require a greater population density than in present-day New York City, without the help of multi-story buildings.  There would be a similar problem with the area where the Israelites camped right after they crossed the Jordan.

After the Israelites reached the Promised Land, the first place that they conquered was Jericho.  Jericho seems to have been a small, strategically located fort.  Conservative Bible scholar Richard Hess estimates the size of the garrison stationed there at about 100.  Hess also talks about numbers from the Amarna correspondence, letters sent from the city-states of Canaan to the Egyptian Pharaoh during the late Bronze Age.  The leaders of the city-states sometimes request that Pharaoh send them troops, and the numbers of troops they requested tend to be no more than a few hundred and are often smaller.  If such a number of soldiers was significant, populations of cities in Canaan couldn't have been too large at that point.       

Two main options have been proposed for solving this numbers problem.  One is the possibility that eleph, the Hebrew word translated "thousand" in Exod 12:37 and Num 1, might not mean "thousand" in this case.  The word can also mean "cattle" (Deut 7:13; 28:4,18,51), "oxen" ( Isa 30:24; Ps 8:7),  "clan/clans" ( Josh 22:14; Judg 6:15; 1 Sam 10:19; Isa 60:22; MIc 5:2), "(military) division/divisions" (Num 1:16), "family", or "tribe".  

In his commentary on Exodus, Douglas Stuart explains that the word started out meaning "ox," then came to include a group of oxen that gravitated around a particular ox, then came to stand for some group of people of indeterminate size, like a clan or a military division, then came to have the technical meaning of "thousand."  

In the case of an army, a single division might be a group of men from one village.  In that case, an eleph might mean ten or fifteen rather than a thousand.  In Exod 12:27 the 600 elephs could have a lot fewer people than 600 thousand.  Stuart suggests that with an eleph that averaged around a dozen, the total number of soldiers in Exod 12:37 could have been about 7200, and the total number of Israelites something like 30,000.  

Another explanation involves the way that ancient documents, in describing military victories in particular, would exaggerate the numbers involved, for the purpose of exalting the king.  It has been proposed that the Bible may have exhibited a similar hyperbolic use of numbers in order to emphasize how much God had blessed the Israelites.

Archaeologists estimate the population of ancient Israel by looking at the kind of houses that they had in those days, the number of people that could fit in such a house, and the amount of land that was available.  When Wheaton College archaeologist Daniel Master visited Miami University in early March 2020 (just before the COVID lockdown) to give a lecture, I asked him about the population of ancient Israel.  Master emphasized that these kinds of estimates are pretty rough.  He gave me an estimate of 125,000 for the population of Israel in the time of David, which could be some 400 years after the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land, after the nation had had a lot more time to grow.

Based on all of this information, I'm inclined to agree with Stuart's estimate of about 30,000 for the number who left Egypt on the Exodus.        

Seder 48: Exodus 6-7---A Fuller Revelation of the Meaning of God's Name

 Moses was very discouraged when he prayed at the end of Exodus 5.  God answered in Exodus 6:1, 

"Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land."  

The wording in this verse may be significant.  Egyptian kings were said to have mighty arms and hands.  God is saying here that he is the real king.  A few verses later God refers to his own "outstretched arm" (v 6).  [For more on this imagery, see James Hoffmeier's paper, "The Arm of God Versus the Arm of Pharaoh in the Exodus Narratives," Biblica 67 (1986), pp. 378-387.] 

God went on to tell Moses, "I am the Lord.  I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty [Heb. El Shaddai], but by my name the Lord [Heb. Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them" (vv 2-3).  

This passage has puzzled readers, since God's name Yahweh is used often in the Genesis narrative, many times in the mouths of the patriarchs.  One explanation, championed by Australian biblical scholar Francis Andersen, is that the verse should be a question:  "Did I not make myself known to them by my name the Lord?" 

Another possibility is that God was announcing that Israel would now experience a fuller revelation of the meaning of his name.  The patriarchs had been blessed by God and had received God's promises, but the complete fulfillment of those promises was still in the future---in particular, the promise of the land.  Now Israel would experience God as covenant keeper.  (Kyle Kettering developed this theme in a sermon at Church of the Messiah on March 13, 2021.) 

God tells Moses more about the concrete meaning of his name in verses 6-8.  He announces to Israel that 

• I will free you from bondage.
• I  will deliver you.
• I will redeem you.
• I will take you as my people (in a marriage relationship).
• I will be your God.
• I will bring you into the land.
• I will give the land to you.

At this point the Israelites were too weighed down with their burdens to care much about what God was revealing through Moses (v 9).  Moses faced a problem:  How could be go to Pharaoh as a representative of the Israelites when he didn't have the support of the Israelites?  This may be part of what Moses was saying in verse 12, along with his worries about his speaking ability.  

God has a solution to this problem.  Moses would be going to Pharaoh not as a representative of the people, but as a representative of the supreme God of the universe (Exod 7:1).  

The rest of Exodus 6 contains genealogical information about the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, concentrating in particular on the Levites and the family of Aaron.  Why were the rest of the tribes not mentioned here?  One midrash says that Moses and Aaron went to the tribes of Israel, starting with Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, trying to drum up support for what they were doing.  No one was interested.  When they saw that not even their own tribe was interested, they gave up this effort.  

It is worth noting that the genealogical information in Exodus 6 is not exhaustive.  Biblical genealogies often do not include every generation.  In particular, the text just mentions four steps from Levi to Moses:    Levi--Kohath--Amram--Moses.  But there probably were a number of additional links.  One evidence of this is that in the tribe of Ephraim, there are 11 links between Ephraim and Joshua ( 1 Chron 7:23-27).