Torah
בְּמִדְבַּר
Numbers
A generation that leaves does not arrive, and the book is honest about why.
Hebrew nameBamidbar, meaning in the wildernessChapters36Position4 of 5 in Torah
What is in it
It opens with a census and an ordered camp, and then almost immediately begins to come apart: complaints about food, a bad report from the scouts, a rebellion, a plague, and a leader who loses his own entry over a struck rock.
The book is the Torah's account of failure over forty years, and it does not protect anyone, including Moses and Aaron.
If you read one chapter
Numbers 13 to 14
The scouts return. Ten reports and two, and the decision that costs a generation.
Passages worth knowing
- Numbers 6:24 to 26The priestly blessing, still in use.
- Numbers 11Complaint about food, and Moses asking to be released from the burden.
- Numbers 13 to 14The scouts, and the forty years.
- Numbers 20:1 to 13The rock, and why Moses does not enter.
- Numbers 22 to 24Balaam, and a donkey that sees more than a prophet.
Questions to sit with
- 01
The scouts all saw the same land. What separates the two reports?
- 02
Balaam is hired to curse and blesses instead. What is the story doing with a foreign prophet?