Numbers is a slog
As part of a communal Rule of Life, we’ve tried to promote Bible Reading as a group practice. For the second time, we’re endeavouring to read through the entire Bible in a year.
I love reading through the entire Bible and I love reading as part of a group.
Committing to reading through the whole of Scripture is great as you have to encounter parts of the Bible that you avoid that are obscure or not commonly spoken about. And reading as a group, you always find brilliant little insights and it reveals to yourself those bits of Scripture that you are embarrassed about, or that you wish were more palatable.
We’re currently reading through Numbers, which is awkward, dull, and offensive in equal measure. Sometimes “rules” (so-called) feel so antiquated and mind-numbingly backwards. Honestly, some days it feels like a slog to get through it.
Before I move on to some things that have excited me in the text, we probably need to pause and examine the assumptions we bring to the text. So often our presumptions go without saying… So they’ve gone without saying! They’ve not been explicitly stated or subject to review or challenge.
How to read
Firstly, we make assumptions about the text, what it is and how we read it.
It occurs during the Exodus narrative, which is full of drama, but it is also full of constitutional notes, codes, rules, and laws. When reading for thrills and episodes of action, hitting on the minutia of constructing a Tent, or Priestly robes, which bits of an animal need to be offered when, or how to handle mould it can be a jarring transition and hard to get on with. We might say boring. Likewise, endless genealogies or demographic data by tribe can be a bit mind-numbing when you want more miracles and happenings.
We must remember that the Bible is not written for entertainment or even for palatable consumption. In our culture today we expect writing to be engaging. News, social media posts, novels, and articles, must all compete for our attention. Impress me with your title and grip me with your first paragraph. The Bible is not pandering to your tastes to win you over!
As a genre, which helps us categorise and make assumptions about what we’re expecting, it’s not fiction nor is it a history book as we consider history. So when we talk about narratives and story-telling, character arcs and development, we need to shed some of our modern preferences, notions, and biases.
What we’re engaging with is essentially an Origin Story, a bit like what we get with superheroes… How did they become what they became? They started out this way, but then this thing befell them, they faced this crisis, and dealt with this dilemma and that is why they ended up becoming a hero, or villain. A more technical-sounding word would be etiology; an explanation or narrative to explain the beginning of Israel.
There is a narrative arc. They began in one place but are destined to become something else.
It starts in a garden and ends in a city. It begins with Adam & Eve and winds up with every tribe & tongue.
How God meets us and moves us
Numbers is part of that narrative. How does God bless the whole of Creation through the offspring of Abram? How does Israel become a nation from the twelve sons of Jacob? How does a collection of slaves labouring in Egypt become God’s peculiar people?
It is easy to get Sunday-school-ish about this and have a rosy view of the text that plays like a highlights reel or a sentimental movie montage, again, like a superhero movie, the segment of the film showing how the hero develops or learns to wield their unique gift. Cue inspiring rock music and fast cuts of them practising and failing and then succeeding with a grin.
Numbers is like the antithesis of that trope. Numbers, like Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and even most of Exodus, is really dealing with some mundane sociological realities of building a new nation. Not just any new nation, with all the humdrum administrative and legislative details of how society would function. But God’s chosen holy nation. A unique nation with a unique calling and a unique way of existing on the world stage. They couldn’t mirror the nations around them. They couldn’t simply borrow the structure of Egypt and replant it in Canaan.
Instead, they needed to begin thinking about how they would exist in a completely different way, as children of YHWH, a God completely unlike any other god in the ancient world. They had no reference points for how they should live. This was an entirely new thing!
How does God begin to turn them around and channel them towards being a people who image Him, a people who example His ways that are fundamentally contrary to the ways of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. It is often quipped that God took Israel out of Egypt in a night, but it took 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel.
God meets Israel where they were at, with their faulty Egypt-immersed ways of thinking and being in the world. And slowly, step by step, He sought to thaw their hardened hearts, give them a heart of flesh and set them on a new trajectory – one that does not accumulate slaves and weapons of war but seeks to love neighbour and protect the marginalised and disenfranchised.
A redemptive-movement hermeneutic: A to B to C
William J. Webb outlines a “redemptive-movement hermeneutic” which articulates how God moves the people of Israel, step by step, away from the prevailing culture towards His Kingdom culture. From our modern standpoint, we can view the Torah as tremendously backwards… But that is because culture has moved on step by step – not necessarily in the directions that God would have wanted, but we have moved along. But, comparative to the milieu they were situated in, Israel was moving in a redemptive direction.
Webb illustrates it by noting, that perhaps the goal is to get humanity to Z, but they were at A. God met them at A, helped move them to B, and set a pattern that would keep them stepping in the right direction, C, D, E… We read Numbers, for example, from the standpoint of M and opine that they were barbaric, but actually, we should recognise that reaching B was a huge step in the right direction. Instead of turning our noses up at how far behind they are when they reach C, we should instead celebrate the movement from A.
Sabbath moves us forwards
A particularly shocking episode is in Numbers 15. A man was found gathering wood on a Sabbath and was subsequently stoned to death. In no way am I condoning this sort of brutal capital punishment, standing where I am at M, but let us just take a moment to consider that maybe this was a move from A to B, rather than being disgusted that they weren’t at M like me.
Israel had been in Egypt for 400 years. Any cultural memory they had was erased, and Joseph and his influence over Pharoah were forgotten. The Children of Israel only knew slavery. Their existence was defined by brutality, exploitation and bricks. Seven days a week. Production. Output. Quotas. Every. Single. Day.
Each day was the same as the last. Bricks. Whips. Scraps of food. Bricks. Whips. Scraps.
You get your rations when you meet your targets. Earn your keep. Struggle for your provision.
How to unpick this mindset? How to get them from A to B?
Sabbath.
Take a day off and be provided for by grace. Trust YHWH instead of your own ability. You won’t be beaten for not producing.
How to overcome 400 years of self-protective effort, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, ingrained through violence and trauma.
Sabbath.
A day of rest.
Don’t slip back into the scarcity mindset of slaves in Egypt. Stay the course. Trust. Experience the grace of YHWH and let it permeate your trauma-hardened hearts. Get His goodness in your bones.
It is barbaric to stone the man to death. And I am horrified and also embarrassed by that being in the text. It is uncomfortable and awkward and I can make no apologetic that would justify that.
But, (and this feels like a very glib gloss) it is a matter of life and death, to live from the abundance and life-giving economy of God, versus the scarcity of slavery in Egypt. That manner of thinking, way of being, and lazy cultural slippage, need to be taken seriously. Make that move from A to B!
Stop being a jerk!
One of the more offensive-sounding legislations can be found in Numbers 5. It’s about unfaithful wives. And alarm bells are already ringing. It is incredibly one-sided. But it gets worse!
“Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘If any man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him, and a man has intercourse * with her and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband and she is undetected, although she has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act, if a spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife when she has defiled herself, or if a spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife when she has not defiled herself, the man shall then bring his wife to the priest, and shall bring as an offering for her one-tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he shall not pour oil on it nor put frankincense on it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of memorial, a reminder of iniquity.
Numbers 5:12-15
Yes. You read that right. Even if there is no shred of evidence and the husband just feels jealous. This is a law that is ripe for exploitation. In a fit of pique, a disgruntled husband can shame his wife for no reason whatsoever. What a jerk!
This made for an interesting discussion with my wife.
Before offering any suggestions about this, I should note that I am very conscious of being a male and maybe coming across as a bit mansplainy. But this degree of self-consciousness already indicates that we’re in a society that is at least capable of being somewhere around the middle of the alphabet of progress.
The ancient world was patriarchal. And not just in the rather formal sense of men having decision-making power, or leading households and nations. It was patriarchal in the sense that men dominated and women were second-class citizens… If they were considered citizens at all. Zero rights. Zero power. And they were viewed with suspicion. To have power or a sense of self was to have beguiled a man to do their bidding. Even the strongest mother figure lived at the erratic whims of the men in her life. How volatile and perilous.
In this arena then, if a man suspected his wife of cheating… or if a man was simply feeling insecure, he was well within his rights to use violence or simply get rid of this woman. At a whim. Jerk! And the woman, now disowned and having a reputation, how vulnerable was she? Vulnerable and impoverished.
That is A.
How does Numbers 5 move things along? How does God meet Israel where they were at and move them towards His Kingdom ideal?
Well, men will still be men – they still can be jealous. But, they cannot do whatever they want to their wife. They have to at least consider that they are just being a jerk. They can’t deploy violence. They cannot disown. Instead, they have to go to the Priest. They have to stake their own reputation by going public. They have to make a confession and make an offering. Every step forces the man to have a cooler head, making him think, really think about what and why he’s doing what he’s doing. Was it just a fit of frustration?
And then there is a test. The woman is made to drink water mixed with dust from the floor of the tabernacle. It has certain witch-hunting vibes to be honest. But, whilst it’s a bit gross, it offers the woman a bit of comeback. She can be vindicated! Whereas the rest of the world at A, the woman had no right to reply and no appeal for justice. This scenario in Numbers 5, whilst still ridiculously one-sided, at least the woman could be proven right… And it was in front of God and man, priest and public. No, tarnished reputation.
Can you imagine how this would affect society?
There would be a little less random accusations from husbands. There would be a bit more protection for women. And over time society would shift. A to B.
Is God moving me? Celebrate the movement
Of course, there’s still a long way to go but God is gently nudging us along, meeting us where we’re at and getting us to the next letter in the redemptive-movement.
We can think about any area of life.
Where am I in terms of patience? An honest assessment: am I at G? How can I detect God moving me to H?
What about generosity? 10% or a couple of ££s here and there? Maybe God is moving me from Q (or C) to R (or D)?
How about prayer? Or kindness? Or peace? Or justice…
Instead of judging someone else for being at F perhaps we can pause and comprehend that they were once at E and we can then applaud the E > F movement instigated by God, rather than condemning someone for not being at K like us. And maybe we can even start to ask how we can be part of the motion from F to G.
Hope Springs Church Coventry 