Numbers 1 - 15

Numbers 1

Registration of Israel’s Troops

Numbers 2

Organization of Israel’s Troops

Numbers 3

Levites Appointed for Service

Numbers 4

Duties of the Kohathite Clan

Numbers 5

Purity in Israel’s Camp

Numbers 6

Nazirite Laws

Numbers 7

Offerings of Dedication

Numbers 8

The Levites Dedicated for Priesthood

Numbers 9

The Second Passover

Numbers 10

The Silver Trumpets

The Lord said to Moses, “Make two trumpets of silver, and use them for calling the assembly together and for having the camps set out.”

§  “When both are sounded, all the assembly is to assemble before you at the entrance to the Tabernacle.

§  If only one is sounded, the princes, the heads of the thousands of Israel, are to assemble before you.

§  When you blow an alarm, the tribes camping on the east are to set out.

§  When you blow an alarm the second time, the camps on the south are to set out. The blast will be the signal for setting out.

§  To gather the congregation together, blow the trumpets, but do not sound an alarm.

§  The sons of Aaron, the priests, are to blow the trumpets. This is to be a lasting ordinance for you and the generations to come.

§  When you go into battle in your own land against an enemy who is oppressing you, then you shall blow an alarm with the trumpets. Then you will be remembered by the Lord your God and you shall be saved from your enemies.

§  Also at your times of rejoicing, your appointed feast, and at the beginning of each month, you are to sound the trumpets.

§  Sound the Trumpets over your burnt offerings and peace offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God. I am the Lord your God.”

Trumpets are yet to sound in the last days! (see Revelation 8:2,3,7,8,10,12; 9:1,13; 15:15;  Matthew 24:31, 1 Corinthians 15:52, 1 Thessalonians 4:16, Isaiah 18:3;  27:12,13)

The Children of Israel Leave Sinai

And it came to pass, on the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, the cloud lifted from above the Tabernacle of the testimony.

And the children of Israel set out from the wilderness of Sinai and traveled from place to place until the cloud came to rest in the wilderness of Paran.

See verses 14-28 to see the order in which the children of Israel set out for the first time, at the Lord’s command through Moses.

Now Moses said to Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law, “We are setting out for the place about which the LORD said, ‘I will give to you.’ Come with us and we will treat you well, for the LORD has promised good things concerning Israel.”

He answered, “No, I will not go; I am going back to my own land and my own people.”

But Moses said, “Please do not leave us. You know where we should camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes. If you come with us, we will share with you whatever good things the LORD gives us.”

So they set out from the mountain of the LORD and traveled for three days. The Ark of the Covenant of the LORD went before them during those three days to find them a place to rest. And the cloud of the LORD was over them by day when they set out from the camp.

And it came to pass, whenever the ark went forward, that Moses said, “Rise up, Lord, and let your enemies be scattered; and let them that hate you flee before you.”

Whenever it came to rest, he said, “Return, O Lord, to the many thousands of Israel.”

Numbers 11

Fire from the LORD

Because of Complaining

Now the people began to complain, and it displeased the LORD, and His anger grew, and then fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.

When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the LORD and the fire was quenched. So that place was called Taberah, because fire from the LORD had burned among them.

Quail from the LORD

Because of more Complaining

Then the mixed multitude of people that was among them started lusting, and again the children of Israel started weeping and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”

The manna was like coriander seed and looked like resin. The people went around gathering it, and then ground it in a hand mill or crushed it in a mortar. They baked it in pans, and made it into loaves, and it tasted like something made with fresh oil.

When the dew settled on the camp at night, the manna also came down.

Then Moses heard the people of every family weeping at the door of their tents. The LORD became exceedingly angry, and Moses was displeased.

He asked the LORD, “Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nursing father that carries an infant, to the land you swore unto their fathers?” 

“Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’” 

“I cannot bear the load of all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me if I have found favor in your eyes, and do not let me see my own ruin.”

The LORD said to Moses: “Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officers among the people. Have them come to the Tabernacle of Congregation, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.”

“Tell the people: ‘Sanctify yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, when you shall eat meat. The LORD heard you when you wept in His ears, saying, “If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt!” Now the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat.”

“You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and you will despise it, because you have despised the LORD, who is among you, and have wailed before Him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’

But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?”

The LORD answered Moses, “Is the LORD’S arm too short? Now you will see whether or not what I say will come true for you.”

So Moses went out and told the people what the LORD had said. He brought together seventy of their elders and had them stand around the Tabernacle. And the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and He took of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, and did not stop.

However, two men, whose names were Eldad and Medad, had remained in the camp. They were listed among the elders, but did not go out to the Tabernacle. Yet the Spirit also rested on them, and they prophesied in the camp.

A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

Joshua son of Nun, who had been a servant to Moses since youth, spoke up and said, “Moses, my lord, stop them!”

But Moses replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD’S people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” Then Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Now there came a wind from the LORD, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall about the camp. It scattered them up to two cubits deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction.

All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they spread them out all around the camp.

But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people, and He struck them with a severe plague.

So God finally gave them what they wanted – flesh food – quail, until it came out their nose, and thousands died. This is God’s wrath. He gives us what we want – even when He knows we will reap the consequences of our lust.

And He called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had lusted. And the people traveled from Kibroth-hattaavah and to Hazeroth and stayed there.

Numbers 12

Miriam and Aaron Oppose Moses

One day Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman he had married.

And they asked, “Has the LORD spoken only through Moses? Has He not also spoken through us?” And the LORD heard this.

(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

At once the LORD said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, “Come out to the Tabernacle of the Congregation, all three of you!” So the three of them went out.

Then the LORD came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the Tabernacle, and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When the two of them stepped forward, He said, “Listen to my words! When there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, will reveal myself to them in visions, and I will speak to them in dreams.”

“But this is not so of my servant Moses, he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak out against my servant Moses?”

The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left.

When the cloud lifted from above the Tabernacle, behold, Miriam’s skin was leprous, it became as white as snow! Aaron turned toward her and saw that she was leprous, and he cried out to Moses, “Please, my lord, I ask you not to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Let her not be as one dead, like one who has come from his mother’s womb with the flesh eaten half away!”

So Moses cried out to the LORD, “Please, God, I beg you, heal her now!”

The LORD replied to Moses, “If her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Confine her outside the camp for seven days; after that she can be brought back.”

So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until she was brought back.

After that, the people left Hazeroth and encamped in the wilderness of Paran.

Numbers 13

Men Sent to Report on Canaan

The LORD said to Moses, “Send some men to search out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. Send a man from every tribe of their fathers, one that is a ruler among them.”

So at the LORD’S command Moses sent them out from the wilderness Paran: all that were leaders of the children of Israel. These are their names:

·     Of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zakkur

·     Of the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori

·     Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh

·     Of the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph

·     Of the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea (Joshua) son of Nun

·     Of the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu

·     Of the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi

·   Of the tribe of Manasseh (a tribe of Joseph), Gaddi son of Susi

·     Of the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli

·     Of the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael

·     Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi

·     Of the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Maki

These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua.)

When Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, he said, “Go southward, and up into the mountain. See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many.”

“What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of cities do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified? How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees in it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.” (It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)

So they went up and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, toward Hamath. They went up through the south and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the children of Anak, lived. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)

When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs.

That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster of grapes the Children of Israel cut off there.

At the end of forty days they returned from searching out the land.

The Report

When they returned, they came to Moses, Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They brought back word to them, and to the entire congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land.

They told Moses, “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey, and this is the fruit from there.”

But the people who live there are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. We also saw many of the children of Anak there.

The Amalekites live in the land to the south, and the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the mountains, and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the coast of Jordan.”

Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up at once and take possession of the land, for we are well able to do it.”

But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people, they are stronger than we are.”

And they spread among the children of Israel a bad report about the land they had searched out. They said, “The land we were sent to search out, devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.”

“There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come from giants. We seemed like grasshoppers among them, and to them we looked the same.”

Numbers 14

The People Rebel

That night the entire congregation raised their voices, and cried, and wept aloud. 

And all the children of Israel complained and murmured against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword, and have our wives and children fall prey? Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?”

And they said to each other, “We should choose a captain and go back to Egypt.”

Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in front of the congregation of the children of Israel. Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had searched the land, tore their clothes and said to the entire company of the children of Israel, “The land we passed through and searched is exceedingly good land. If the LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be in fear of them.”

But the entire congregation talked about stoning them. Then the glory of the LORD appeared at the Tabernacle of the Congregation to all the children of Israel. The LORD said to Moses, “How long will these people provoke me? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down with a plague and disinherit them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.”

Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them. And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that you, Lord, are with these people and that you, Lord, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.”

“If you put all these people to death, leaving none alive, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, ‘The LORD was not able to bring these people into the land he swore unto them, so he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’

“And now, I beg you, let the power of my LORD be great, just as you have declared: ‘The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, and forgiving of sin and rebellion. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ I ask that you pardon the iniquity of these people, for your mercy is great, just as you have forgiven them from the time they left Egypt until now.”

The LORD replied, “I have pardon them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live shall the glory of the LORD fill the whole earth, because all those men which have seen my glory, and the miracles I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, have tempted, and tested me ten times, and have not listened to my voice.”

“Surely they will never see the land I swore to their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it. But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to search, and his descendants shall possess it.”

“Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out toward the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.”

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “How long shall I bear this evil congregation, which murmur against me? I have heard the complaining of the children of Israel that murmur against me.”

“So tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very thing I heard you say: In this wilderness your bodies will fall, every one of you twenty years old or more who was according to your number, and who has grumbled against me. Not one of you shall enter the land I swore to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.”

 “As for your children that you said would be prey, I will bring them in to enjoy the land you have rejected. But as for you, your bodies will fall in this wilderness.”

 And your children shall wander in the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the wilderness. For forty years, one year for each of the forty days you searched the land, you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.”

“I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this evil congregation, which has banded together against me. They will meet their end in this wilderness; and there they shall die.”

And the men Moses sent to search the land, which returned and made all the congregation murmur against him by spreading a bad report about it, were struck down and died of a plague before the LORD.

But of all the men who went to search out the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh survived.

The children of Israel were so close to enjoying all that God had for them, but now, because of their stubborn unbelief, many more years of suffering and death awaited them. If only they had submitted to God and trusted Him instead of depending on their own understanding. Their murmuring and complaining reflected a discontented, rebellious, and ungrateful heart. A grave sin that God does not take lightly.

Caleb and Joshua did not follow the crowd, even when they were threatened with death. They believed God! And forty years later, Joshua led the children of Israel into the land God had given them. He and Caleb knew God keeps his promises!

It is very important to know God’s promises and have faith that He keeps them! (See Hebrews 3:7-19)

Hebrews 3:7-19, “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, ⁸ Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: ⁹ When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. ¹⁰ Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. ¹¹ So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) ¹² Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. ¹³ But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. ¹⁴ For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; ¹⁵ While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. ¹⁶ For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. ¹⁷ But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? ¹⁹ So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.”

When Moses reported this to all the children of Israel, they mourned greatly.  

Early the next morning they set out for the top of the mountain, saying, “Since we are here, we will go up to the land the LORD promised. For we have sinned.”

But Moses said, “Why are you disobeying the LORD’S command? This will not succeed! Do not go up, because the LORD is not with you. Your enemies will defeat you, for the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you will fall by the sword. You have turned away from the LORD, he will not be with you.”

Nevertheless, in their presumption they went up toward the hilltop, though neither Moses nor the ark of the LORD’S covenant moved from the camp.  

Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and attacked them and beat them down all the way to Hormah.

Numbers 15

Supplementary Offerings (1 – 21)

Offerings for Unintentional Sins (22 – 31)

The Sabbath-Breaker Put to Death (32 – 36)

Tassels on Garments (37 – 41)