Sense out of Numbers

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.
So they shall put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them.

Numbers 6:22-27

There’s a lot in the first five books of the Bible that’s hard to understand, and even harder for us to accept when we do understand. They’re full of odd and mysterious things, elaborate instructions for the tabernacle, commands to do this or that in exactly the right way, and the like. To us, it looks so out-of-date and often so far-fetched that we wonder how it could be considered the real “Word of God.”

Not everything can be accounted for by the fact that we are reading things from a very different time and culture, although much of it becomes clearer to us when we better understand the background and situation. But let’s face it, even so, some of it just remains a plain mystery to us no matter what the background may be.

Having said that, we can still see in many places in the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses) things that cut across all boundaries, times, cultures, and differences. The above passage is one of them. After six chapters of “What in the world was that about?” comes this gem at the very end. It states in a nutshell what God was getting at all along: the blessing and keeping of his people.

Of course, not everything commanded to Israel is a command for us today. We’re not trekking across the desert under a type of temporary, highly conditional martial law as they were, but we are serving the same God whose character and values remain the same. Jesus made clear to us the Old Testament commands that were to endure and the ones that were only for a specific time and place. We’re not called upon to stone people, drive out the wicked from their villages, and that sort of thing.

What God intended by everything he commanded Israel to do, regardless of how strange it may seem to us thousands of years later, was to bless, keep, smile upon, be gracious to, and grant peace and order to the people called by his name. These little “windows” into the meaning of the Law make the reading of it all worthwhile.

So we don’t necessarily have to comprehend every single point recorded in the text; all we really need to get is what the intent and end result was: the desire of our Creator to get us into right relationship with himself, to forsake evil, to teach us the importance of following his will and guidance, and to be blessed and prospered in the midst of it all. What he does and says in every generation is for us. This point becomes even clearer in the next passage from Deuteronomy.

So let’s not get buried in the details. Rather, let’s be aware that on every page of the Bible there is in the background the God who takes a great interest in us, who deals with us according to our own time and place, and who makes his will and purpose known in order to get us to our intended destination—a spectacular Promised Land of freedom and joy that will never pass away.

Rescue from sin, death, and destruction is the Bible’s main plot, the theme that overarches everything from Genesis to Revelation. It’s the only good news there is. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, and for his unwavering faithfulness from generation to generation.