To The Reader

You made it! 🥳 We’ve reached the end of the book of Numbers. And it ends on a technical note. This chapter brings together Numbers 27 and Leviticus 25. Remember back in chapter 27 with the daughters of Zelophehad inheriting their father’s share of the land? 👧🏽👩🏽‍🦱👱🏾‍♀️👩🏽👧🏽 I kinda wonder if there wasn’t some matchmaking…

A picture map is worth a thousand words: Here we can see the boundaries and the designated “cities of refuge.” The question marks on some of the spots are because, archeologists aren’t exactly sure on some of them. It’s not like there are 3500 year old signs just laying around. 🪧 What’s up with the…

This chapter is a recap of all the material from the Exodus up to now. Basically. It would be so many levels of ridiculous to recap a recap. So I’m only going to touch on a couple of things that particularly stood out to me. (And be forewarned – I’m feeling particularly linguistic today. 🤓😏…

“the land that Yahweh struck before the community of Israel, is a land of livestock, and your servants have livestock.”‭‭Numbers‬ ‭32‬:‭4‬ ‭LEB‬‬ When I read that, this soundtrack starts playing on my mental jukebox: This is cattle country… 🐂🐂🐂🐂🐂🐂🐂 (I tried Googling “cattle country” and apparently there’s a video game?) If you don’t know the…

Vows & Vengeance… What are these vows? And why is it handled differently for males and females? 🤔 Most of us don’t take many vows these days. Marriage vows and being “sworn in” as part of judicial proceedings or as part of a government position are the kinds of vows and oaths we’re familiar with.…

Offering Review… Q: When does the teacher give a review? A: Before a test. 📝 There are several things happening in these chapters. Moses does a new census. The technicalities of land inheritance are settled. Joshua is commissioned to take Moses’ place. The Lord is getting the new generation ready to settle in the land.…

The Daughters of Zelophehad… Zelophehad (tzel-of-khad) is one of my favorite OT names. I prefer how it is usually pronounced: zel-off-uh-had. We know nothing about him except that he was of the generation that died in the wilderness. He had no sons. Only 5 daughters – who are about to go into the promised land…

The Second Census – 📋 So I just got a clue and realized that Dathan and Abiram were… brothers?! What? How did I not catch that before? That’s why when we get done reading the Bible through, you’re gonna go back to Genesis and do it all over again. Because you’ll learn new details every…

Third time’s a charm, right? For the third time King Balak of Moab takes Balaam to a mountain to view the camp of Israel and pronounce a curse on them. But… “By now Balaam realized that the Lord was determined to bless Israel, so he did not resort to divination as before. Instead, he turned…

Balaam & the Talking Donkey. 🫏 It’s my belief that some animals (probably more than we realize) are capable of thought and communication. Not at the level of a human adult but more like the level of a small child. My dog Walter knew what several words meant: walk, treat, kitty… 😏 🐩 You might…