Numbers4chapter 4

Numbers 4:1-4

Kohath is counted first, though Gershon stands first in Levi's line at Numbers 3:17, so the order of the three families here follows the load rather than the birth. Numbers 3 had counted every male Levite from a month old, while this count takes only the men between thirty and fifty, the ones who will lift. Albert Barnes points out that the phrase rendered enter into the host is military language, literally to war the warfare. Two other passages give a different starting age, twenty-five at Numbers 8:24 and twenty at 1 Chronicles 23:24, and Adam Clarke reads the difference as the heaviest carrying work being reserved for men in full strength.

Numbers 4:5-8

The veil that screened the most holy place comes down and becomes the ark's innermost wrapping, so the curtain that hid the ark inside the tent now travels on it. The ark takes three coverings where the rest take two, and it alone wears blue on the outside, while the table of shewbread wears scarlet and the brasen altar wears purple at verse 13. Barnes reads put in the staves as setting them in order, since Exodus 25:14-15 says the ark's staves were never drawn out of their rings. The shewbread stays on the table while it moves, the continual bread shall be thereon, so the bread before God carries on through the march.

Numbers 4:9-14

The packing runs outward from the ark: the table, then the candlestick, then the golden altar of incense, then the ministering vessels, then the brasen altar out in the court. The candlestick and the loose instruments go on a bar, because only the ark, the table and the two altars were built with rings and staves of their own. Matthew Henry reads verse 13 as a purple cloth spread over ashes in which the holy fire was banked and preserved, so the fire that Leviticus 6:12-13 forbade to go out kept burning while the altar moved. Blue, purple and scarlet are the three colours of the tabernacle hangings at Exodus 26:1, and here they are the colours of its packing.

Numbers 4:15-16

The Kohathites carry the holiest things in Israel and are forbidden to touch them, and the verse gives the penalty without softening it, lest they die. 2 Samuel 6:6-7 records the rule set aside when the ark went on a cart and Uzzah put out his hand to steady it, and Matthew Henry names that death in his comment here. Eleazar, the elder surviving son of Aaron, carries the oil, the incense, the daily meat offering and the anointing oil himself and holds the oversight of everything else, while verses 28 and 33 put Gershon and Merari under his brother Ithamar.

Numbers 4:17-20

The warning goes to Moses and Aaron rather than to the men in danger, and it takes the form of a charge to the priests, cut ye not off the tribe of the families of the Kohathites. Careless covering would destroy the family that carries, so the weight of the risk sits on the men who pack. Verse 20 keeps the bearers out while the holy things are being covered, which means the Kohathites handled what they were never permitted to see. Adam Clarke observes that the Hebrew behind covered is nearer to swallowed up, and Henry read the whole arrangement as the darkness of that dispensation, which is a reading of the older commentators rather than a claim the text makes.

Numbers 4:21-28

Gershon is the eldest of Levi's three sons and his families are numbered second, and their charge is the fabric of the tent, the curtains, the coverings, the hanging at the door, the hangings of the court and the cords. Verse 24 calls it to serve, and for burdens, and verse 26 closes so shall they serve, so one word covers the standing work and the carrying work alike. Every load is assigned by Aaron and his sons, and verse 27 says ye shall appoint unto them in charge all their burdens, so each man received his piece from the priests. Gershon answers to Ithamar, the younger son of Aaron, who had already kept the account of the tabernacle's materials at Exodus 38:21.

Numbers 4:29-33

As for the sons of Merari: Merari carries the frame, the boards, the bars, the pillars, the sockets, the pins and the cords. Verse 32 orders that the instruments of their charge be reckoned by name, so every pin and every cord was inventoried and answered for, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown draw from it that God disregards nothing belonging to his service. This is the heaviest load in the chapter, since the sockets of the sanctuary alone weighed a hundred talents of silver at Exodus 38:27, and Numbers 7:8 gave Merari four wagons where Gershon had two and Kohath had none.

Numbers 4:34-41

Kohath yields two thousand seven hundred and fifty men of working age and Gershon two thousand six hundred and thirty. Set against Numbers 3, where the whole families from a month old came to eight thousand six hundred for Kohath and seven thousand five hundred for Gershon, about a third of each family falls inside the window from thirty to fifty. Each count closes with the same refrain, according to the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses, which is how the chapter says that the arrangement came from God rather than from the men carrying it out.

Numbers 4:42-49

Merari numbers three thousand two hundred, more serving men than either of the other two families, though Numbers 3:34 counted Merari the smallest of the three at six thousand two hundred. The chapter gives no reason for that proportion and the older commentators supply none they agree on. The total is eight thousand five hundred and fourscore out of the twenty and two thousand Levites counted from a month old at Numbers 3:39, and the last verse sets each man in his place, every one according to his service, and according to his burden. It takes that many men to move one tent, and Israel is still camped at Sinai.