Ot Analysis -- Numbers 15:

OT Analysis -- Numbers 15: 22-41

TEXT for ANALYSIS: NUMBERS, Chapter 15, Verses 22-41 (New Living Bible Translation

"But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the Lord has given you through Moses. 23 and suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the Lord has commanded through Moses. 24 if the mistake was made unintentionally, and the community was unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It must be offered along with its prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and with one male goat for a sin offering. 25 With it the priest will purify the whole community of Israel, making them right with the Lord, and they will be forgiven. For it was an unintentional sin, and they have corrected it with their offerings to the Lord -- the special gift and the sin offering. 26 the whole community of Israel will be forgiven, including the foreigners living among you, for all the people were involved in the sin.

27 "If one individual commits an unintentional sin, the guilty person must bring a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering. 28 the priest will sacrifice it to purify the guilty person before the Lord, and that person will be forgiven. 29 These same instructions apply both to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you.

30 "But those who brazenly violate the Lord's will, whether native-born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the Lord, and they must be cut off from the community. 31 Since they have treated the Lord's word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his command, they must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt."

Penalty for Breaking the Sabbath

32 One day while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 the people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community. 34 They held him in custody because they did not know what to do with him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, "The man must be put to death! The whole community must stone him outside the camp." 36 So the whole community took the man outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Tassels on Clothing

37 Then the Lord said to Moses, 38 "Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: Throughout the generations to come you must make tassels for the hems of your clothing and attach them with a blue cord. 39 When you see the tassels, you will remember and obey all the commands of the Lord instead of following your own desires and defiling yourselves, as you are prone to do. 40 the tassels will help you remember that you must obey all my commands and be holy to your God. 41 I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt that I might be your God. I am the Lord your God!"

Part 1 -- Introduction and Typology - Numbers, in historical context, is part of the original five books of the Jewish Bible, the Torah, known as the Pentateuch. It describes the beginning and end of the forty-year hiatus of wandering through the wilderness, and the trials and tribulations felt during that period. The title of the book is taken from the act of cencuses, or the numbering of people, which took place both prior to and after the period. We term this a census, but in Judaic times, only fighting men over 20 years old were counted, and if the scripture is taken literally, it means there were about 600,000 soldiers, and a population of over 2 million, an amount most biblical scholars believe would be not only unsustainable, but unlikely for the time period. Instead, the translation should refer to "tent grouping" or "family unit" making the total number of soldiers at 36,000 and the total population a bit under 100,000 -- still a large amount for the pre-modern era (Duquid, 2006).

Literally, the passages are translated from the Greek arithmoi (numbers as in counting) and the Hebrew bamidbar (in the wilderness of). It is the fourth book of the Old Testament, and is divided into three parts: 1-10 is the preparation of the march through Sinai, and the census taken; 10:11-21:20 is the account of the journey from Sinai to Moab, the use of spies and the reports brought back, and the eight murmuring of the people at the hardships encountered; finally, 21:21-36, the transaction in the plains of Moab before crossing the Jordan River. According to Hebraic tradition, the chronological period in the book consists of the second month of the second year (measured from Exodus) to the beginning of the eleventh month of the fortieth year -- in all, roughly 39 years 9 months of wandering, with, of course, fewer in number at the end of the journey than at the beginning. Again, according to tradition, Moses was the author of all five books of the Torah, but stylistically, at least in both Hebrew and then Aramaic, the prose in Numbers is far dryer and more scholarly, leading most to believe that this particular section was derived from several priestly sources tentatively dated at 4th-6th century BC (Harris, 1985).

Since Numbers is divided into three parts, it is useful to provide an overview of the literative focus and consequences of each section:

Number's the People of the Lord -- God ordered Moses to count those able to bear arms (men over 20) in order to organize and assign the tribes to the particular Tabernacle; an organization based on clan and kinship, with each flying a different banner. Moses is then ordered to consecrate a section of those numbered, the Levites, for the service of the Tabernacle in the place of the first-born sons; the Levites are further divided into three families. Preparations are then made for resuming the march to the Promised Land, and various ordinance and laws are decreed that, presumably, will allow a large group of people to exist in a hostile environment for several years (Hasel, 1991).

Recommencement of the journey -- Moses is ordered to make two silver trumpets for bringing the tribes together and announcing a recommencement of the journey. Initial dissatisfaction is punished by fire, and as Moses complains of the stubbornness of the Israelites is ordered to choose seventy elders to assist him in governing. When individuals insult Moses, they are punished by God, but to help quell the frustration, Moses sends spies into the lands to find out how fertile the fields, how fortified the cities, and how strong the people. God is angry that the spies return with conflicting stories, and threatens to kill all the people. But for Moses' pleading, the journey would be over. Instead, the people continue grumbling all are left in turmoil, and again their faith is tested (Ibid).