An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 25: More rules, basically. And some numbers (Numbers 1-5)

Numbers 1-5
More rules, basically. And some numbers.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology. 

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Numbers 1
“Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls;”

Two things happen in this chapter. Twelve leaders are appointed to the twelve tribes of Israel, and a census is taken of all the fighting men, with each tribe having somewhere between 40-70 thousand; total 603,550. That’s just men over twenty who can fight, so the total population of the Israelites is going to be at least 4-5 times that, so 2 million people and upwards. That seems a lot for a nomadic culture, especially as it is implied that they’re all travelling together. For comparison, Glastonbury Festival visitor numbers are around 175,000 and that looks like this:

Two million is closer to the number of people making the hajj to Mecca, and that looks more like this:

The Levites are also exempt not only from the census but also military functions as they are the keepers of the tabernacle.

Numbers 2

“Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of their father's house: far off about the tabernacle of the congregation shall they pitch.”

The same information again, only this time it seems that the Israelites are forming up for battle. Otherwise, it’s a tribe by tribe tally, same as last chapter, and it gives me little to say. I wonder, though, if this indicates an oral tradition that predates the written version, since this is quite similar to the infamous “List of Ships” chapter in the Iliad, which is thought to be a chance for a bard to show off his memory skills.

Numbers 3

“And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel: therefore the Levites shall be mine;”

I was wrong before, the Levites are only exempt from fighting, not from being counted, but theirs is a special case. The tribe of Levi become a kind of offering to God, as payment for saving the firstborn of the Israelites during the Egyptian plagues. Rather than take the firstborn, the Levites are given in service to God, and this chapter breaks down the duties of the individual branches of the Levites as regards care of the tabernacle and paraphernalia. But because there are currently 273 more firstborn children than there are Levites, an additional tithe is paid to cover the additional firstborn.

I wonder here, if perhaps child sacrifice was not once a thing amongst these cultures, and this oblatory offering as a substitute was not a more civilised adaptation to an older, darker custom. After all, there had to be a specific prohibition against sacrificing your children to Moloch (and when Abraham was supposed to sacrifice Isaac he didn’t think it was an unusual request), which suggests that it was a thing for some people. Once again, and probably not for the last time, I look to The Golden Bough – Kings that embodied the fertility of the tribe were often sacrificed to make way for a new, younger model. Over time, more wily sacred kings came up with the idea of sacrificing a substitute. Sometimes, this was their son (essentially removing a rival as well as saving their own skin). You have to wonder; even if child sacrifice wasn’t a common occurrence amongst the Israelites, if perhaps once a leader sacrificing his son was something that happened.

Numbers 4

“This shall be the service of the sons of Kohath in the tabernacle of the congregation, about the most holy things”

The duties of looking after the various parts of the tabernacle are divided amongst the various Levite tribes. The Kohathites look after the altar and associated paraphernalia, the Gershonites the hangings and the Merarites the structural elements. There are specific rules for how to handle each part and how to wrap it up (mainly in blue cloth and badger skin) for transportation. The ritual involved is considered important because anyone who does not do it properly is believed to die; again a common belief that sacred items contain a “power” that must be handled correctly lest it prove fatal (or, just as bad, be undone and thus lose its sacredness).

Numbers 5

“And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse”

This chapter starts with a repeat of the injunction about keeping “lepers” separate from the rest of the group, which we’ve addressed before. Basically it’s a reasonable hygiene precaution if you keep morailty out of it, which thankfully is the case here.

The rest of the chapter deals with what to do if a man thinks his wife has committed adultery but can’t prove it, which involves a kind of ordeal where she is made to drink some water mixed with the dust from the floor of the tabernacle, whilst an offering is made. If she gets sick, she was guilty, if not she was innocent. Like all trials by ordeal, that’s going to be pretty hit and miss depending on how dirty the floor of the tabernacle is. Besides people walking about on it there’s going to have been animals brought in for sacrifice, and that’s not going to be a clean business. And, um, I seem to have missed what happens if a man is suspected of adultery. That’ll be in the next chapter, right?