Numbers1chapter 1

Numbers 1:1-4

The census is dated one month after the tabernacle was reared, which Exodus 40:17 puts on the first day of the first month of the second year, and nineteen days after this order the cloud lifts at 10:11 and the camp moves. Verse 3 says what the count is for, from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war, so what is being taken is a muster roll rather than a population. Exodus 30:12 had attached a ransom to any such numbering so that there be no plague, and 2 Samuel 24 records what a count taken without that word cost David.

Numbers 1:5-16

Twelve princes are named to stand with Moses, one for each tribe. Levi is absent from the list and Ephraim and Manasseh are counted separately, which holds the number at twelve. Nahshon the son of Amminadab stands for Judah, and his name runs on into Ruth 4:20 and 1 Chronicles 2:10 and into the line of Christ at Matthew 1:4, where the King James spells it Naasson, while his sister Elisheba had married Aaron at Exodus 6:23. Gad's prince is Deuel here and Reuel at 2:14, which Adam Clarke lays to the likeness of the Hebrew letters daleth and resh, with 7:42 and 10:20 both reading Deuel.

Numbers 1:17-19

Moses and Aaron took these men: The people declared their pedigrees, and the word pedigrees occurs in this verse and nowhere else in the King James Bible. The count rests on family registers already kept, so a man's place in Israel was a matter of record before it was a matter of arms. Ezra 2:62 and Nehemiah 7:64 are where those registers fail, and men who could not find theirs were put from the priesthood. The order was given on the first day of the second month at verse 1 and the assembly gathered on that same day at verse 18.

Numbers 1:20-31

The six sons of Leah are numbered first and every tribe gets the same enrolment formula word for word. Judah is the largest at seventy four thousand six hundred, which John Calvin reads beside Jacob's word over Judah at Genesis 49:10, and chapter 2 will set Judah first on the east and first on the march. Gad at forty five thousand six hundred and fifty is the only total in the chapter that does not end in a round hundred, a detail Adam Clarke takes from Henry Ainsworth. Reuben is still called Israel's eldest son here and heads the list, and chapter 2 will place him behind Judah.

Numbers 1:32-43

Joseph is counted as two tribes, and Ephraim at forty thousand five hundred stands above Manasseh at thirty two thousand two hundred. Jacob had crossed his hands over those two boys at Genesis 48:14-20 and said the younger would be greater, and the muster roll reads that way generations later. Benjamin comes in at thirty five thousand four hundred though Genesis 46:21 credits him with ten sons going down into Egypt, while Dan, who went down with one son at Genesis 46:23, musters sixty two thousand seven hundred and stands second only to Judah.

Numbers 1:44-46

The total is six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty, and Exodus 38:26 had already given that exact figure from the half shekel taken of every man numbered, so this count confirms one already made. Seventy souls went down into Egypt at Genesis 46:27 and about six hundred thousand men on foot came out at Exodus 12:37. This list and the one in chapter 26 frame the whole book, and 26:64-65 reports what became of every man on it, that there was not left a man of them save Caleb and Joshua.

Numbers 1:47-49

Levi is left out by name, and the text gives the exclusion as a command spoken to Moses, which John Gill reads as clearing Moses of partiality toward his own tribe. Levi is counted, in chapter 3 and on another basis, all the males from a month old and upward rather than the men of fighting age, with the total at 3:39 standing at twenty two thousand. Genesis 49:5-7 had left Levi under a word about being scattered in Israel, and Exodus 32:26-29 records the tribe that came to Moses at the gate of the camp, which Albert Barnes reads as the ground of the charge given here.

Numbers 1:50-53

Levi is taken off one service and put to another, taking the tabernacle down, setting it up, bearing it and camping around it. The stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death, and the stranger meant is any Israelite outside Levi, a rule repeated at 3:10, 3:38 and 18:7 and tested by Korah in chapter 16. Israel pitches by standard at a distance, Levi forms a ring between, and verse 53 states the reason outright, that there be no wrath upon the congregation. The word standard occurs at verse 52 for the first time in Scripture, before chapter 2 names the four.

Numbers 1:54

The chapter closes on the nation doing according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, and the clause is doubled, so did they. John Gill reads the repetition as a note on how readily and how exactly the order was kept. Chapters 1 to 10 keep landing on lines of that kind, and from 11:1 the book records the opposite, with the fire of the Lord burning among a people who complained.