TESTING GOD

verse by verse notes on Numbers

Numbers gets its name because in it God counts the people who comprise His earthly nation. They are the freed ones, released from Egyptian bondage and bound to the Lord by the Covenant of Abraham and the Law of Sinai. The former is explained in Moses' first book. The latter is detailed in Moses' second and third books. Here, in Numbers, the people are led away from the foot of Sinai to the land first promised to faithful Abraham. It should have been an easy journey, not only in terms of distance and time, but with the Lord on their side.

And yet it's a journey that will consume forty years and claim the lives of almost every adult who first left the clutches of Pharoah. Numbers, thus, records not only a census of the people, but a history of their turbulent relationship with God, and the great number of times they brought the punishment of the Lord down on themselves as they made their way home.