Numbers4chapter 4

Numbers 4:21-28

Gershon is the eldest of Levi's sons yet is numbered second, and its charge is the fabric of the tent: curtains, coverings, entrance curtains, courtyard curtains and ropes. Verse 27 puts every load under Aaron and his sons, “you are to assign to them all that they are responsible to carry”. Gershon answers to Ithamar, who had kept the inventory of the tabernacle at Exodus 38:21.

The words as well join Gershon to the duty Kohath has just received. John Gill observes that birth as Levi's eldest son left Gershon under the same burden. His families are counted by the same houses and clans.

Gershon's count uses the same window as Kohath's. The army of Numbers 1:3 was counted from twenty years old, and this service starts ten years later. Matthew Henry comments that a man may make a good soldier much sooner than a good minister.

The service had two halves. John Gill reports Aben Ezra's division of the verse, with the work covering the tasks at a standing tent and the transport covering the loads on the march. Aben Ezra counted the setting up of the tent, the making of the bread, the slaughtering and the guarding as the work.

Gershon carries every layer of the tent's fabric. John Wesley sorts the verse into the ten inner curtains, the goats' hair tent over them, the covering of rams' skins and the fine leather above all. The frames those curtains hung on went to Merari.

The courtyard hangings enclosed the whole precinct, both the tent and the bronze altar, as John Wesley notes. Gershon moved the sanctuary's outer fence along with its coverings. The ropes and fittings went with it.

Each Gershonite carried what a priest assigned him. Matthew Henry pictures the priests naming a curtain for one man and a hanging for another, so that every man knew his work and the march ran without confusion. John Gill adds that each man answered for his load, down to a pin or a cord.

Albert Barnes sees Israel's standing offices growing out of duties men had taken up in the emergencies of the first year out of Egypt. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that Eleazar, next in line to Aaron, took Kohath on the march, and his brother took the other two clans. Ithamar had the larger crew.

Numbers 4:29-33

As for the sons of Merari: Merari carries the frame of the tent: the frames, crossbars, posts, bases, tent pegs and ropes. Verse 32 says “You shall assign by name the items that they are responsible to carry”, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown draw from it that God disregards nothing belonging to his service. It is the heaviest load, with bases of a hundred talents of silver at Exodus 38:27.

John Gill reports that the Septuagint reads twenty-five here and at verse 3, bringing this chapter into line with Numbers 8:24. The Hebrew keeps thirty in all three counts. Gill holds that men of twenty-five came to learn and took up the work at thirty.

Merari's load is the skeleton of the tent, the upright frames, the crossbars that tied them and the bases they stood in. John Wesley calls the bases the feet the pillars stood on. John Gill notes that these frames enclosed both the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place.

Matthew Henry and John Wesley read the tent taken down as a picture of a believer's death, the figure Paul uses at 2 Corinthians 5:1. In their reading the pegs and ropes listed by name stand for the body, kept safe until it is raised. Nothing on the list was to be lost.

Verse 33 closes the Merarite charge with the formula verse 28 used for Gershon, both clans under Ithamar. Matthew Henry observes that thousands were assigned where far fewer could have lifted the loads, so the tent could come down and go up quickly. Many hands made quick work.

Numbers 4:34-41

Kohath yields 2,750 men of working age and Gershon 2,630. Against the 8,600 and 7,500 counted from a month old in chapter 3, about a third of each family falls inside the window from thirty to fifty. Each count closes with a refrain, “according to the command of the LORD through Moses”, which is how the chapter assigns the arrangement to God.

Only the men inside the window were drafted for the tent. Matthew Henry reasons that the younger men and those past fifty were left to take down and carry their families' own tents. God's house, he says, comes before a man's own.

Adam Clarke sets this figure beside the 8,600 Kohathites of Numbers 3:28 and finds 5,850 males too young or too old for the work. Kohath had the most males of the three families. It had fewer workers than Merari.

Kohath gave fewer than a third of its males to the work. Matthew Henry drew from the figure that many belong to a congregation while few carry its work, and he cited Philippians 2:20-21. The refrain names Moses as the channel of the order.

The leaders of the congregation named at verse 34 keep counting with Moses and Aaron. The twelve leaders of Israel had assisted in the same way at the census of the army in Numbers 1:44. Matthew Henry calls the whole process a second muster of Levi.

Matthew Henry gives two reasons for the upper limit of fifty. It spared men whose strength was failing, and it kept the work of God from being done slowly by tired hands. In his reckoning, twenty years' good service was pretty well for one man.

Gershon had 7,500 males at Numbers 3:22, and 2,630 of them fell inside the working window. Adam Clarke counts the remaining 4,870 as too young or too old. Gershon handled the fabric with the smallest crew of the three.

The Gershonite refrain is the shortest of the three and ends at the LORD's command, where verses 37 and 45 add through Moses. John Gill cites this verse to show that Aaron shared the Gershonite count, though verse 21 names Moses alone. Each family's count closes on its order.

Numbers 4:42-49

Merari numbers 3,200, more working men than either other family, though Numbers 3:34 counted it the smallest at 6,200, and the older commentators agree on no reason for it. The total is 8,580 of the 22,000 Levites at 3:39, and verse 49 gives each one “his work and burden”. It takes that many men to move one tent, and Israel is still camped at Sinai.

The phrase who came to serve limits the count to men able to take up the work. John Wesley reads it as every man of the right age with no defect or other hindrance. On that reading, a disabled man of forty went uncounted.

John Wesley and Matthew Henry read the proportion as providence fitting the family to its task. Merari had 6,200 males, and more than half fell in the working age, against about a third in the other two families. The heaviest loads found the most shoulders.

Merari's count closes like Kohath's, at the LORD's command through Moses. Matthew Henry notes that the greatest burden lay on this family, the frames, posts and bases. Numbers 10:17 sends Gershon and Merari out first with the tent, and 10:21 has it set up before Kohath arrives with the holy objects.

The three counts now make one total. Matthew Henry sets it beside the census of Numbers 1, where the smallest tribe had almost four times as many fighting men as Levi had workers. He reads the gap as the few devoted to God's service among the many engaged in the world's.

The summary names both halves of the Levite's work, the service at the tent and the carrying of it. Matthew Henry applies the chapter's language of entering the host to ministers, calling their office a good warfare with 1 Timothy 1:18. Henry holds that the office carries labour with its honour.

Adam Clarke adds the family totals of Numbers 3 to 22,300, which leaves 13,720 males outside the working age. Numbers 3:39 gives the tribe as 22,000, three hundred fewer. Fewer than two in five Levites could carry.

The chapter ends where it began, with the LORD's command, and it gives every man a double assignment, a work and a burden. Matthew Henry reads the arrangement as each man knowing his task, so that the camp could move without confusion. Every Levite in the window carried something.