INTRODUCTORY
To summon from the past and reproduce with any detail the story
of Israel’s life in the desert is now impossible. The outlines alone
remain, severe, careless of almost everything that does not bear on
religion. Neither from Exodus nor from Numbers can we gather those
touches that would enable us to reconstruct the incidents of a
single day as it passed in the camp or on the march. The tribes move
from one "wilderness" to another. The hardship of the time of
wandering appears unrelieved, for throughout the history the doings
of God, not the achievements or sufferings of the people, are the
great theme. The patriotism of the Book of Numbers is of a kind that
reminds us continually of the prophecies. Resentment against the
distrustful and rebellious, like that which Amos, Hosea, and
Jeremiah express, is felt in almost every portion of the narrative.
At the same time the difference between Numbers and the books of the
prophets is wide and striking. Here the style is simple, often
stern, with little emotion, scarcely any rhetoric. The legislative
purpose reacts on the historical, and makes the spirit of the book
severe. Seldom does the writer allow himself respite from the grave
task of presenting Israel’s duties and delinquencies, and exalting
the majesty of God. We are made continually to feel the burden with
which the affairs of the people are charged; and yet the book is no
poem: to excite sympathy or lead up to a great climax does not come
within the design.
Nevertheless, so far as a book of incident and statute can resemble
poetry, there is a parallel between Numbers and a form of literature
produced under other skies, other conditions-the Greek drama. The
same is true of Exodus and Deuteronomy; but Numbers will be found
especially to bear out the comparison. The likeness may be traced in
the presentation of a main idea, the relation of various groups of
persons carrying out or opposing that main idea, and the Puritanism
of form and situation. The Book of Numbers may be called eternal
literature more fitly than the Iliad and AEneid have been called
eternal poems; and the keen ethical strain and high religious
thought make the movement tragical throughout. Moses the leader is
seen with his helpers and opponents, Aaron and Miriam, Joshua and
Hobab, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, Balak and Balaam. He is brought
into extremity; he despairs and appeals passionately to Heaven: in
an hour of pride he falls into sin which brings doom upon him. The
people, murmuring, craving, suffering, are always a vague multitude.
The tent, the cloud, the incense, the wars, the strain of the
wilderness journey, the hope of the land beyond-all have a dim
solemnity. The occupying thought is of Jehovah’s purpose and the
revelation of His character. Moses is the prophet of this Divine
mystery, stands for it almost alone, urges it upon Israel, is the
means of impressing it by judgments and victories, by priestly law
and ceremony, by the very example of his own failure in sudden
trial. With a graver and bolder purpose than any embodied in the
dramatic masterpieces of Greece, the story of Numbers finds its
place not in literature only, but in the development of universal
religion, and breathes that Divine inspiration which belongs to the
Hebrew and to him alone among those who speak of God and man.
The Divine discipline of human life is an element of the theme, but
in contrast to the Greek dramas the books of the exodus are not
individualistic. Moses is great, but he is so as the teacher of
religion, the servant of Jehovah, the lawgiver of Israel. Jehovah,
His religion, His law, are above Moses. The personality of the
leader stands clear; yet he is not the hero of the Book of Numbers.
The purpose of the history leaves him, when he has done his work, to
die on Mount Abarim, and presses on, that Jehovah may be seen as a
man of war, that Israel may be brought to its inheritance and begin
its new career. The voice of men in the Greek tragedy is, as Mr.
Ruskin says, "We trusted in the gods; we thought that wisdom and
courage would save us. Our wisdom and courage deceive us to our
death." When Moses despairs, that is not his cry. There is no Fate
stronger than God; and He looks far into the future in the
discipline He appoints to men, to His people Israel. The remote, the
unfulfilled, gleams along the desert. There is a light from the
pillar of fire even when the pestilence is abroad, and the graves of
the lustful are dug, and the camp is dissolved in tears because
Aaron is dead, because Moses has climbed the last mountain and shall
never again be seen.
In respect of content, one point shows likeness between the Greek
drama and our book-the vague conception of death. It is not an
extinction of life, but the human being goes on into an existence of
which there is no definite idea. What remains has no reckoning, no
object. The recoil of the Hebrew is not indeed piteous, and fraught
with horror, like that of the Greek, although death is the last
punishment of men who transgress. For Aaron and Moses, and all who
have served their generation, it is a high and venerated Power that
claims them when the hour of departure comes. The God they have
obeyed in life calls them, and they are gathered to their people. No
note of despair is heard like that in the Iphigenia in Aulis, -
"He raves who prays To die.
‘Tis better to live on in woe
Than to die nobly."
Dying as well as living men are with God; and this God is the Lord
of all. Immense is the difference between the Greek who trusts or
dreads many powers above, beneath, and the Hebrew realising himself,
however dimly, as the servant of Jehovah the holy, the eternal. This
great idea, seized by Moses, introduced by him into the faith of his
people, remained it may be indefinite, yet always present to the
thought of Israel with many implications till the time of full
revelation came with Christ, and He said: "Now that the dead are
raised, even Moses showed, in the bush, when he called the Lord the
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He
is not the God of the dead, but of the living." The wide interval
between a people whose religion contained this thought, in whose
history it is interwoven, and a people whose religion was
polytheistic and natural is seen in the whole strain of their
literature and life. Even Plato the luminous finds it impossible to
overpass the shadows of pagan interpretations. "In regard to the
facts of a future life, a man," said Phaedo, "must either learn or
find out their nature; or, if he cannot do this, take at any rate
the best and least assailable of human words, and, borne on this as
on a raft, perform in peril the voyage of life, unless he should be
able to accomplish the journey with less risk and danger on a surer
vessel-some word Divine." Now Israel had a Divine word; and life was
not perilous.
The problem which appears again and again in Moses’ relation with
the people is that of the theocratic idea as against the grasping at
immediate success. At various points, from the start in Egypt
onwards, the opportunity of assuming a regal position comes to
Moses. He is virtually dictator, and he might be king. But a rare
singleness of mind keeps him true to Jehovah’s lordship, which he
endeavours to stamp on the conscience of the people and the course
of their development. He has often to do so at the greatest risk to
himself. He holds back the people in what seems the hour of advance,
and it is the will of Jehovah by which they are detained. The Unseen
King is their Helper and equally their Rhadamanthine Judge; and on
Moses falls the burden of forcing that fact upon their minds.
Israel could never, according to Moses’ idea, become a great people
in the sense in which the nations of the world were great. Amongst
them greatness was sought in despite of morality, in defiance of all
that Jehovah commanded. Israel might never be great in wealth,
territory, influence, but she was to be true. She existed for
Jehovah, while the gods of other nations existed for them, had no
part to play without them. Jehovah was not to be overborne either by
the will or the needs of His people. He was the self-existent Lord.
The Name did not represent a supernatural assistance which could be
secured on terms, or by any authorised person. Moses himself, though
he entreated Jehovah, did not change Him. His own desire was
sometimes thwarted; and he had often to give the oracle with sorrow
and disappointment.
Moses is not the priest of the people: the priesthood comes in as a
ministering body, necessary for religious ends and ideas, but never
governing, never even interpreting. It is singular from this point
of view that the so-called Priests’ Code should be attributed
confidently to a caste ambitious of ruling or practically enthroned.
Wellhausen ridicules the "fine" distinction between hierocracy and
theocracy. He affirms that government of God is the same thing as
rule of priest; and he may affirm this because he thinks so. The
Book of Numbers, as it stands, might have been written to prove that
they are not equivalent; and Wellhausen himself shows that they are
not by more than one of his conclusions. The theocracy, he says, is
in its nature intimately allied to the Roman Catholic Church, which
is, in fact, its child; and on the whole he prefers to speak of the
Jewish Church rather than the theocracy. But if any modern religious
body is to he named as a child of the Hebrew theocracy, it must not
be one in which the priest intervenes continually between faith and
God. Wellhausen says again that "the sacred constitution of Judaism
was an artificial product" as contrasted with the broadly human
indigenous element, the real idea of man’s relation to God; and when
a priesthood, as in later Judaism, becomes the governing body, God
is, so far, dethroned. Now Moses did not give to Aaron greater power
than he himself possessed, and his own power is constantly
represented, as exercised in submission to Jehovah. A theocracy
might be established without a priesthood; in fact, the mediation of
the prophet approaches the ideal far more than that of the priest.
But in the beginnings of Israel the priesthood was required,
received a subordinate place of its own, to which it was throughout
rigidly confined. As for priestly government, that, we may say, has
no support anywhere in the Pentateuch.
The Book of Numbers, called also "In the wilderness," opens with the
second month of the second year after the exodus, and goes on to the
arrival of the tribes in the plains of Moab by the Jordan. As a
whole it may be said to carry out the historical and religious ideas
of Exodus and Leviticus: and both the history and the legislation
flow into three main channels. They go to establish the separateness
of Israel as a people, the separateness of the tribe of Levi and the
priesthood, and the separateness and authority of Jehovah. The first
of these objects is served by the accounts of the census, of the
redemption of the first-born, the laws of national atonement and
distinctive dress, and generally the Divine discipline of Israel
recorded in the course of the book. The second line of purpose may
be traced in the careful enumeration of the Levites; the minute
allocation of duties connected with the tabernacle to the
Gershonites, the Kohathites, and the Merarites; the special
consecration of the Aaronic priesthood; the elaboration of
ceremonials requiring priestly service; and various striking
incidents, such as the judgment of Korah and his company, and the
budding of Aaron’s almond twig. Lastly, the institution of some
cleansing rites, the sin offering of chapter 19, for example, the
details of punishment that fell upon offenders against the law, the
precautions enjoined with regard to the ark and the sanctuary,
together with the multiplication of sacrifices, went to emphasise
the sanctity of worship and the holiness of the unseen King. The
book is sacerdotal; it is marked even more by a physical and moral
Puritanism, exceedingly stringent at many points.
The whole system of religious observance and priestly ministration
set forth in the Mosaic books may seem difficult to account for, not
indeed as a national development, but as a moral and religious gain.
We are ready to ask how God could in any sense have been the author
of a code of laws imposing so many intricate ceremonies, which
required a whole tribe of Levites and priests to perform them. Where
was the spiritual use that justified the system, as necessary, as
wise, as Divine? Inquiries like these will arise in the minds of
believing men, and sufficient answer must be sought for.
In the following way the religious worth and therefore the
inspiration of the ceremonial law may be found. The primitive notion
that Jehovah was the exclusive property of Israel, the pledged
patron of the nation, tended to impair the sense of His moral
purity. An ignorant people inclined to many forms of immorality
could not have a right conception of the Divine holiness; and the
more it was accepted as a commonplace of faith that Jehovah knew
them alone of all the families of the earth, the more was right
belief towards Him imperilled. A psalmist who in the name of God
reproves "the wicked" indicates the danger: "Thou thoughtest that I
was altogether such a one as thyself." Now the priesthood, the
sacrifices, all provisions for maintaining the sanctity of the ark
and the altar, and all rules of ceremonial cleansing, were means of
preventing that fatal error. The Israelites began without the solemn
temples and impressive mysteries that made the religion of Egypt
venerable. In the desert and in Canaan, till the time of Solomon,
the rude arrangements of semi-civilised life kept religion at the
everyday level. The domestic makeshifts and confusion of the early
period, the frequent alarms and changes which for centuries the
nation had to endure, must have made culture of any kind, even
religious culture, almost impossible to the mass of the people. The
law in its very complexity and stringency provided a needful
safeguard and means of education. Moses had been acquainted with a
great sacerdotal system. Not only would it appear to him natural to
originate something of a like kind, but he would see no other means
of creating in rude times the idea of the Divine holiness. For
himself he found inspiration and prophetic power in laying the
foundation of the system; and once initiated, its development
necessarily followed. With the progress of civilisation the law had
to keep pace, meeting the new circumstances and needs of each
succeeding period. Certainly the genius of the Pentateuch, and in
particular of the Book of Numbers, is not liberating. The tone is
that of theocratic rigour. But the reason is quite clear; the
development of the law was determined by the necessities and dangers
of Israel in the exodus, in the wilderness, and in idolatrous,
seductive Canaan.
Opening with an account of the census, the Book of Numbers evidently
stood, from the first, quite distinct from the previous books as a
composition or compilation. The mustering of the tribes gave an
opportunity of passing from one group of documents to another, from
one stage of the history to another. But the memoranda brought
together in Numbers are of various character. Administrative,
legislative, and historical sources are laid under contribution. The
records have been arranged as far as possible in chronological
order: and there are traces, as for instance in the second account
of the striking of the rock by Moses, of a careful gathering up of
materials not previously used, at least in the precise form they now
have. The compilers collected and transcribed with the most reverent
care, and did not venture in any ease to reject. The historical
notices are for some reason anything but consecutive, and the
greater part of the time covered by the book is virtually passed
over. On the other hand some passages repeat details in a way that
has no parallel in the rest of the Mosaic books. The effect
generally is that of a compilation made under difficulties by a
scribe or scribes who were scrupulous to preserve everything
relating to the great lawgiver and the dealings of God with Israel.
Recent criticism is positive in its assertion that the book contains
several strata of narrative; and there are certain passages, the
accounts of Korah’s revolt and of Dathan and Abiram, for instance,
where without such a clew the history must seem not a little
confused. In a sense this is disconcerting. The ordinary reader
finds it difficult to understand why an inspired book should appear
at any point incomplete or incoherent. The hostile critic again is
ready to deny the credibility of the whole. But the honesty of the
writing is proved by the very characteristics that make some
statements hard to interpret and some of the records difficult to
receive. The theory that a journal of the wanderings was kept by
Moses or under his direction is quite untenable. Dismissing that, we
fall back on the belief that contemporary records of some incidents,
and traditions early committed to writing, formed the basis of the
book. The documents were undoubtedly ancient at the time of their
final recension, whensoever and by whomsoever it was made.
By far the greater part of Numbers refers to the second year after
the exodus from Egypt, and to what took place in the fortieth year,
after the departure from Kadesh. Regarding the intermediate time we
are told little but that the camp was shifted from one place to
another in the wilderness. Why the missing details have not survived
in any form cannot now be made out. It is no sufficient explanation
to say that those events alone are preserved which struck the
popular imagination. On the other hand, to ascribe what we have to
unscrupulous or pious fabrication is at once unpardonable and
absurd. Some may be inclined to think that the book consists
entirely of accidental scraps of tradition, and that inspiration
would have come better to its end if the religious feelings of the
people had received more attention, and we had been shown the
gradual rise of Israel out of ignorance and semi-barbarism. Yet even
for the modern historical sense the book has its own claim, by no
means slight, to high estimation and close study. These are
venerable records, reaching back to the time they profess to
describe, and presenting, though with some traditional haze, the
important incidents of the desert journey.
Turning from the history to the legislation, we have to inquire
whether the laws regarding priests and Levites, sacrifices and
cleansings, bear uniformly the colour of the wilderness. The origins
are certainly of the Mosaic time, and some of the statutes
elaborated here must be founded on customs and beliefs older even
than the exodus. Yet in form many enactments are apparently later
than the time of Moses; and it does not seem well to maintain that
laws requiring what was next to impossible in the wilderness were,
during the journey, given and enforced as they now stand by a wise
legislator. Did Moses require, for instance, that five shekels, "of
the shekel of the sanctuary," should be paid for the ransom of the
first-born son of a household, at a time when many families must
have had no silver and no means of obtaining it? Does not this
statute, like another which is spoken of as deferred till the
settlement in Canaan, imply a fixed order and medium of exchange?
For the sake of a theory which is intended to honour Moses as the
only legislator of Israel, is it well to maintain that he imposed
conditions which could not be carried out, and that he actually
prepared the way for neglect of his own code?
It is beyond our range to discuss the date of the compilation of
Numbers as compared with the other Pentateuchal books, or the age of
the "Jehovistic" documents as compared with the "Priests’ Code."
This, however, is of less moment, since it is now becoming clear
that attempts to settle these dates can only darken the main
question-the antiquity of the original records and enactments. The
assertion that Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers belong to an age later
than Ezekiel is of course meant to apply to the present form of the
books. But even in this sense it is misleading. Those who make it
themselves assume that many things in the law and in the history are
of far older date, based indeed on what at the time of Ezekiel must
have been immemorial usage. The main legislation of the Pentateuch
must have existed in the time of Josiah, and even then possessed the
authority of ancient observance. The priesthood, the ark, sacrifice
and feast, the shewbread, the ephod, can be traced back beyond the
time of David to that of Samuel and Eli, quite apart from the
testimony of the Books of Moses. Moreover, it is impossible to
believe that the formula "The Lord said unto Moses" was invented at
a late date as the authority for statutes. It was the invariable
accompaniment of the ancient rule, the mark of an origin already
recognised. The various legislative provisions we shall have to
consider had their sanction under the great ordinance of the law and
the inspired prophetism which directed its use and maintained its
adaptation to the circumstances of the people. The religious and
moral code as a whole, designed to secure profound reverence towards
God and the purity of national faith, continued the legislation of
Moses, and at every point was the task of men who guarded as sacred
the ideas of the founder and were themselves taught of God. The
entire law was acknowledged by Christ in this sense as possessing
the authority of the great lawgiver’s own commission.
It has been said that "the inspired condition would seem to be one
which produces a generous indifference to pedantic accuracy in
matters of fact, and a supreme absorbing concern about the moral and
religious significance of facts." If the former part of this
statement were true, the historical books of the Bible, and, we may
say, in particular the Book of Numbers, would deserve no attention
as history. But nothing is more striking in a survey of our book
than the clear unhesitating way in which incidents are set forth,
even where moral and religious ends could not be much served by the
detail that is freely used. The account of the muster-roll is a case
in point. There we find what may be called "pedantic accuracy." The
enumeration of each tribe is given separately, and the formula is
repeated, "by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to
the number of the names from twenty years old and upward, all that
were able to go forth to war." Again, the whole of the seventh
chapter, the longest in the book, is taken up with an account of the
offerings of the tribes, made at the dedication of the altar.
These oblations are presented day after day by the heads of the
twelve tribes in order, and each tribe brings precisely the same
gifts-"one silver charger, the weight thereof was a hundred and
thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels after the shekel
of the sanctuary, both of them full of fine flour mingled with oil
for. a meal offering; one golden spoon of ten shekels full of
incense; one young bullock, one ram, one he-lamb of the first year
for a burnt offering; one male of the goats for a sin offering; and
for the sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five
he-goats, five he-lambs of the first year." Now the difficulty at
once occurs that in the wilderness, according to Exodus 16, there
was no bread, no flour, that manna was the food of the people. In
Num 11:6 the complaint of the children of Israel is recorded: "Now
our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all: we have nought save
this manna to look to." In Jos 5:10 it is stated that, after the
passage of the Jordan, "they kept thepassover on the fourteenth day
of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. And they did eat of
the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover,
unleavened cakes and parched corn in the self-same day. And the
manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of
the land." To the compilers of the Book of Numbers the statement
that tribe after tribe brought offerings of fine flour mingled with
oil, which could only have been obtained from Egypt or from some
Arabian valley at a distance, must have been as hard to receive as
it is to us. Nevertheless, the assertion is repeated no less than
twelve times. What then? Do we impugn the sincerity of the
historians? Are we to suppose them careless of the fact? Do we not
rather perceive that in the face of what seemed insuperable
difficulties they held to what they had before them as authentic
records? No writer could be inspired and at the same time
indifferent to accuracy. If there is one thing more than another on
which we may rely, it is that the authors of these books of
Scripture have done their very utmost by careful inquiry and
recension to make their account of what took place in the wilderness
full and precise. Absolute sincerity and scrupulous carefulness are
essential conditions for dealing successfully with moral and
religious themes; and we have all evidence that the compilers had
these qualities. But in order to reach historical fact they had to
use the same kind of means as we employ; and this qualifying
statement, with all that it involves, applies to the whole contents
of the book we are to consider. Our dependence with regard to the
events recorded is on the truthfulness but not the omniscience of
the men, whoever they were, who from traditions, records, scrolls of
law, and venerable memoranda compiled this Scripture as we have it.
They wrought under the sense of sacred duty, and found through that
the inspiration which gives perennial value to their work. With this
in view we shall take up the various matters of history and
legislation.
Recurring now, for a little, to the spirit of the Book of Numbers,
we find in the ethical passages its highest note and power as an
inspired writing. The standard of judgment is not by any means that
of Christianity. It belongs to an age when moral ideas had often to
be enforced with indifference to human life; when, conversely, the
plagues and disasters that befell men were always connected with
moral offences. It belongs to an age when the malediction of one who
claimed supernatural insight was generally believed to carry power
with it, and the blessing of God meant earthly prosperity. And the
notable fact is that, side by side with these beliefs, righteousness
of an exalted kind is strenuously taught, For example, the reverence
for Moses and Aaron, usually so characteristic of the Book of
Numbers, is seen falling into the background when the Divine
judgment of their fault is recorded; and the earnestness shown is
nothing less than sublime. In the course of the legislation Aaron is
invested with extraordinary official dignity; and Moses appears at
his best in the matter of Eldad and Medad when he says, "Enviest
thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord’s people were
prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them." Yet
Numbers records the sentence pronounced upon the brothers: "Because
ye believe Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of
Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land
which I have given them." And more severe is the form of the
condemnation recorded in Num 27:14 : "Because ye rebelled against My
word in the wilderness of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to
sanctify Me at the waters before their eyes." The moral strain of
the book is keen in the punishment inflicted on a Sabbath-breaker,
in the destination to death of the whole congregation, for murmuring
against God-a judgment which, at the entreaty of Moses, was not
revoked, but only deferred-and again in the condemnation to death of
every soul that sins presumptuously. On the other hand, the
provision of refuge cities for the unwitting man-slayer shows the
Divine righteousness at one with mercy.
It must be confessed the book has another note. In order that Israel
might reach and conquer Canaan there had to be war; and the warlike
spirit is frankly breathed. There is no thought of converting
enemies like the Midianites into friends; every man of them must be
put to the sword. The census enumerates the men fit for war. The
primitive militarism is consecrated by Israel’s necessity and
destiny. When the desert march is over, Reuben, Gad, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh must not turn peacefully to their sheep and
cattle on the east side of Jordan; they must send their men of war
across the river to maintain the unity of the nation by running the
hazard of battle with the rest. Experience of this inevitable
discipline brought moral gain. Religion could use even war to lift
the people into the possibility of higher life.
|