The fourth book of the Bible is called “Numbers” in the English, Latin and Greek versions. In the Hebrew Bible this book is called “In the Desert,” after the custom of taking a significant word from the first sentence to designate a particular book.
The people of Israel are numbered or counted in this book, and the telling of it makes for rather dull reading. Also, the book tells what took place from the time they leave Mount Sinai until they reach the Promised Land of Canaan. But there is much more of profound significance to the book than what is revealed by its two titles.
Numbers is composed in the spirit of Moses but was put together several centuries after his death. The same source is used for the other books of this unit known as the Pentateuch or five-volume book. Moses is referred to in the third person.
A great deal of legal material is introduced which effectively destroys the continuity of the narration. There is no real unity to the book, and the detailed statistics add to the complexity. Also, the figures connected with the census are not to be taken literally, otherwise the total population would have amounted to more than two million people. Some scholars think that this census belongs to the time of King David rather than to the time of Moses.
The book can be divided into three parts using geography as the basis:
1: reparing to depart from Sinai, 1-1-10;
2: the journey from Sinai to the plains of Moab, 10:11-22:1,
3: what took place on the plains of Moab, 22:2-36:13.
The events in part one took about twenty days, in part two about thirty-eight years, in part three about five months. Even when the people are travelling, Numbers does not include all the details nor does it narrate them in proper sequence. The authors were concerned primarily in telling what it meant to live under God’s dominion and in underscoring the divine significance of the events related. We must be aware of this purpose when reading any part of the Bible.
Numbers is a theological presentation regarding the significance of the covenant made at Sinai. God dwells among His people with a never-ending love. God will never totally abandon His people despite their grumbling, disobedience, rebellion. Punishment follows waywardness but never abandonment by God. He guides them through the desert, provides food and water ln barren wastes, leads them to victory against hostile forces, and brings them eventually to the Promised Land. We learn the lesson that God listens to our prayers for often Moses prayed for special help and received it.
We would like to single two occasions when Moses prayed to God with results that play an important part in our tradition to this day. In Numbers 21:4-9, the people turned against Moses with bitter complaints. It didn’t do them any good for they soon had to ask Moses to pray to God for relief from a plague of poisonous snakes.
“Moses interceded for the people, and Yahweh answered him, “Make a fiery serpent and put it on a standard. If anyone is bitten and looks at it, he shall live.’ So Moses fashioned a bronze serpent which he put on a standard, and if anyone was bitten by a serpent, he looked at the bronze serpent and lived.’
Now go to John 3:13-14 where Christ is talking to Nicodemus at night.
“No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven, and the Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
If a person is to be saved he must turn up his eyes to Christ “lifted up” on the cross as the symbol of his “lifting up” in the ascension for Christ said He was God and proved it by His resurrection and ascension. All the truths of our faith depend on Christ being what He said He was.
The other incident arose out of an occasion when “There was no water for the community, and they were all united against Moses and Aaron” (Numbers 20:2). Moses and Aaron prayed fervently to God for help The answer was to take the branch from the Tent of Meeting and to strike a nearby rock.
“Moses took up the branch from before Yahweh, as he had directed him. Then Moses and Aaron called the assembly together in front of the rock and addressed them. ‘Listen now, you rebels. Shall we make water gush from this rock for you?’ And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with the branch; water gushed in abundance, and the community drank and their cattle, too” (Numbers 20:9-11).
St. John tells us that he saw the soldier pierce the side of Christ on the cross “and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34). St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians wrote “and all drank the same spiritual drink, since they all drank from the spiritual rock that followed them as they went, and that rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4).
Many of the Fathers of the Church interpret the water and blood as symbols of baptism and the Eucharist and these two sacraments as signifying the Church which is born like a second Eve from the side of another Adam. The pierced of Christ, too, is the scriptural basis of devotion to His love symbolised in His Heart. There’s much food for contemplation and meditation in the event of Moses striking the rock.