An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 26: Nazarites, Silver Trumpets and (not) The Village (Numbers 6-10)

Numbers 6-10

Nazarites, Silver Trumpets and (not) The Village.

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 6

“Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the LORD”

These haven’t been mentioned before, the Nazarites, but they seem to be a particularly holy type of ascetic. They must not eat or drink anything that comes from the grape vine, from wine down to grapes, nor must they cut their hair, or touch anything that is dead. The rest of the chapter is concerned with the specifics of offerings that must be made if they violate these, which include cutting off their hair and burning it on the altar.

There’s nothing else here that explains what a Nazarite is, so perhaps it was considered well known enough at the time not to need explanation, but I guess holy dedicates of one kind or another have been with us ever since mankind conceived of the idea of gods. Maybe we will get more of them anon. I resisted making a Prisoner references for this chapter, partly because I couldn’t think of one.

Numbers 7

“He offered for his offering one silver charger, the weight whereof was an hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering”

The twelve princes of the twelve tribes make their offerings to the tabernacle and the Levites in this chapter. They give some wagons and oxen, which go to be used to transport the tabernacle (except the Kohathites who look after the silverware – they have to carry it). Then they bring offerings, one by one, day by day. These are all the same, but in true religious book fashion they get listed one by one, so essentially you have twelve repeats of the same offerings by twelve different people on twelve different days. It doesn’t make for the most riveting reading, even allowing for the poetic and rhetorical effects of repetition, but I suppose there’s not a lot that could be done about that.

Numbers 8

“Speak unto Aaron, and say unto him, When thou lightest the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light over against the candlestick”

Hm, yeah, we’ve done this bit before. The Levites are ritually purified so that they may attend the tabernacle, and the reason that they are set apart is as an oblation to replace the firstborn, as payment for not killing the firstborn in the escape from Egypt. Seen it already, next please.

Numbers 9

“And they kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at even in the wilderness of Sinai: according to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel”

This chapter goes over old ground as well. First we get the injunction about keeping Passover, and some addenda about the specifics. Some men who are unclean because they touched a dead body must still celebrate Passover, for example. The general message is that it is better to do so even if you are ritually unclean, or abroad or otherwise unable to do so, than not.

The second half of this chapter concerns the presence, or otherwise of the cloud over the tabernacle. We’ve seen this before, both a cloud and a pillar of fire signalling the presence of God. It’s used as a method of determining if the camp should stay or move – as long as there is cloud over the tabernacle the camp should stay put. Part of me wonders if this translates as a piece of folk wisdom that lets you predict the weather conditions in the Arabian peninsular, much like “red sky at night” or “mare’s tails and mackerel sky”. “Cloud over the tabernacle” predicts a bad day ahead, so best not to strike camp.

Numbers 10

“Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps”

This chapter is roughly threefold in what it tells us. The first part concerns the silver trumpets, and the various times when they must be sounded – to call people to prayer, to summon the princes, to sound a march and at the start of each month, at sacrifices and “days of gladness and in your solemn days”.

Then the Israelites set forth. Here we seem to be going back to the first setting forth after stopping to construct the tabernacle, in the second month of the second year since escaping from Egypt. So although we got told back in – was it Exodus? - that the Israelites spent forty years wandering, they haven’t done that yet. And then they only travel three days. The bulk of the rest of the chapter is a description of the marching order of all the tribes and the subdivisions of the Levites.