As we continue with Numbers, we, finally (after a whole month), get back to the narrative flow of the Israelite’s journey. Though as we will find, Numbers is a great example of a well redacted (edited) hotchpotch of JE and P material. This means that we’ll continually break from the story to learn numerous and varied details regarding census and regulatory data.

This week we’ll look specifically at Chapters 10 – 26. There’s a lot of very disparate material in these chapters so it’s hard to make out broad-brush themes. But I think we see more of what has been an increasingly emerging theme in the Old Testament: that the people of God must have no other gods but Yahweh.

What we have to try and get our head round is the incredibly polytheistic nature of all the cultures with which Israel was in contact at this time (polytheistic means belief in many gods rather than just one). Israel’s growing monotheism was so radical in its day that it was nothing short of crazy! Try telling people who’ve lived all their lives seeing a spectrum of colours that there is only one colour. Or try telling a food-lover that there are only carrots. People who had grown up assured that there were many gods would find this Yahweh really overbearing, exclusive and ‘by Molech, if this ‘God’ is so much better, he’d better prove it!’

And so we have a lot of grumbling, a lot of questioning and a lot of rebelling. Why should we follow Yahweh, he’s brought us nothing but trouble? We don’t have proper food or water, our enemies are too big, we were better off in Egypt! And the people also question Moses and Aaron and even Aaron questions Moses and the bottom line is: trust is fading.

The stories of Numbers 10-14, 16-17 and 20-21 are pretty disturbing. In the face of this dying trust Israel has become a totalitarian police-state-style theocracy. There is zero tolerance for dissent; mind-boggling numbers are killed for their rebellion and unquestioning loyalty to Moses is mandatory. The irony, of course, is that in the search for freedom, the Israelites continually endure seemingly oppressive punishments from their liberator God. Is it all just a big mess? Is anything good going to come from this wandering wilderness rebuke?

In chapters 22 – 26 we read a fascinating and powerful comedy involving Balak, king of Moab and Balaam the prophet. Through Balaam’s oracles we catch a glimpse of the wandering Israel. ‘“From the rocky peaks I see them, from the heights I view them. I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations” (23:9); “No misfortune is seen in Jacob, no misery observed in Israel. The Lord their God is with them; the shout of the King is among them” (23:21); “The people rise like a lioness; they rouse themselves like a lion that does not rest till he devours his prey and drinks the blood of his victims” (23:24).’ You can imagine Balaam, looking down onto the plains of the Jordan and seeing this vast sea of people with no political allegiance, camped in twelve divisions around their central tent of worship, their customs clearly foreign. They must have been an intimidating and electrifying vision.

These are the two Israels of Numbers. On the one hand fidelity to Yahweh hangs by a thread, yet on the other, compare Israel to its neighbours and the difference is startling. We may not applaud the means of refinement, but get outside the camp and up on the hillside and there’s a bigger perspective involved; Israel is a light for outsiders, not just for itself.

There’s so much about this narrative that is difficult to assess; the God of these stories is so harsh. Are we being soft if we question his judgements? Maybe there is an important lesson for us in Numbers that good things do require significant sacrifice. That’s certainly something the New Testament confirms. But maybe also we have to use the hindsight of history to question the strategy of Moses.

It would be so easy, when so much is at stake (in this case the survival of the nation of Israel as a people in their own right) to put words in God’s mouth and have him justify the ‘necessary’ measures required to weed dissent out of the community. Moses would not be the first or last person in history to use God as a political puppet, if this is indeed what is going on; we can only read so far between the lines. But there is something troublingly powerful about having only one man able to hear from God and deliver the rules, and when any sort of democracy is promoted, for him to punish it instantly by death (Ch.16).

I may be totally wrong about Moses, and he may have simply been doing exactly what God asked of him. But the God I see in Jesus does not really match the God I read of in Numbers and I find myself wondering why. For me, these middle chapters of Numbers are a powerful example of the intense wrestling that good people must go through when entrusted with an important task. What is it worth? What am I prepared to compromise in achieving it? Moses was entrusted with leadership of the people of Yahweh, who must have no other gods but him. The goal was laudable, but at what cost? Was it worth it?

I think this is the question that Numbers leaves us with. And to ask it is good for the soul. Because we will always face the choice between fighting for the ‘end’, the ‘goal’ and preserving integrity with the ‘means’, the route to the goal. It’s an age old questions, ‘can the end justify the means?’ and Numbers asks it most potently.

So ask yourself: what are you most committed to? And what would you sacrifice to preserve it?