Numbers 25 – Israel is encamped
at Shittim (at the foot of the mountains in northeaster part of Moab). And the
people go immediately astray—giving themselves to debauchery with the women of
Moab and worshiping their gods. So God
gets furious with them. He tells Moses
that the leaders must be “impale[d]” (Jerusalem
Bible 25:4). Moses turns this task over to the judges he has
appointed.
Phineas
(name of Egyptian origin, grandson of Aaron) executes judgment on an Israelite
who consorts with a Midianite woman and on the women too. I wonder why Midian is a bad nation here since Moses’
married a Midianite woman. The zeal of Phineas turns away the Lord’s
anger (25:10). This
also reinforces the “calling” of the Levites who first won God’s favor by a
similar vendetta against the idolaters in the golden calf episode, but under
the leadership of a Levite from the new generation, the generation permitted to
enter the Holy Land.
Numbers 26 – A second census
closes out the book and also starts the section of Numbers that speaks of the
transition from Moses’ leadership to Joshua’s. Moving from the rebellion narratives, a sense of order must also be
reestablished in the community. The final
exhortation of Moses must wait until Deuteronomy. This
may be out of place, but in the New Testament, it is in John where we are given the final exhortation of Jesus, our Moses.
The
purpose of this census is perhaps to
assure that no one from the first census will enter the Promised Land. The counts are: Reubenites – 43,730;
Simeonites – 22,200; Gadites – 40,500; Judahites – 76,500; Issacharites –
64,300; Zebulunites – 60,500; Manassahites – 52,700; Ephraimites – 32,500;
Benjaminites – 45,600; Danites – 64,400; Asherites – 53,400; Naphtalites –
45,400 (601,730 total).
Division
of the land is determined partly by number and partly by lot [considered a way
of determining God’s will]. The total
number of male Levites over the age of one month was 23,000. In the census there “was not a man . . .who
had been registered by Moses and the priest Aaron in the census of the
Israelites taken in the desert of Sinai.
For the Lord had told them that they would surely die in the desert, and
not one of them was left except Caleb. . . and Joshua. . .” (26:64-65).
Origen (185-254 AD)
De Principiis (First
Principles)
Preface
9 – He says he will
inquire into whether the term “incorporeal” is found in the Scriptures under
another name; and he says, “it is also to be a subject of investigation how God
himself is to be understood—whether as corporeal, and formed according to some
shape, or of a different nature from bodies—a point which is not clearly
indicated in our teaching. And the same inquiries have to be made regarding
Christ and the Holy Spirit, as well as respecting every soul, and everything
possessed of a rational nature.”
I don’t know how others feel about this attempt to approach the
Scriptures and the seminal “doctrines” or principles of the Christian faith
with the tools we have of reasoning and imagination. But for me, it is so
similar to the way I have tried to deal with the mysteries of being human that
I am in awe of what I read. He makes leaps I have trouble making but I feel him
searching and trying with everything in him to comprehend “truth.” And he lived
2000 years ago.
10 – The Church does
teach that there are angels with God, “good influences, which are His servants
in accomplishing the salvation of men.” But
what they are and how they were created is not “clearly stated” by the teachers
of the Church. “Everyone, . . . must make use of elements and foundations
of this sort, according to the precept, ‘Enlighten yourselves with the light of
knowledge,’ if [you] desire to form a connected series and body of truths
agreeably to the reason of all these things, that by clear and necessary
statements he may ascertain the truth regarding each individual topic, and
form, as we have said, one body of doctrine, by means of illustrations and
arguments—either those which he has discovered in Holy Scripture, or which he
has deduced by closely tracing out the consequences and following a correct
method.”
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