God’s Ordering of Space and Time
28:1 to 29:40
A central issue at the beginning of the book of Numbers was the arrangement of Isra’el’s camp structure (to see link click Am – The Camp of the Twelve Tribes of Isra’el), which allowed God’s people to have the holy Presence dwell in their midst. The design of the camp with the central Tabernacle and its surrounding concentric circles of priests and Levites functioned as a buffer zone between a holy God and a sinful people. The order of the camp was an attempt to create a safety space, or zone, to protect the people from coming too close and being killed. One of the main responsibilities of the Levites was to protect the Tabernacle from anyone, either unwittingly or intentionally, invading it.
Thus, the introductory chapters of Numbers focused on God creating spatial order within the camp of Isra’el. Such order helped to restrain the forces of sin, chaos, and collapse that threatened the fragile nation. The wilderness remained a potent metaphor for the threatening forces of evil and death even after the Israelites arrived in Canaan (Judges 2:1-5). For the wilderness generation, who stood poised to enter the Promised Land, the focus moved from creating order in space to creating order in time. To see an excellent website on science and the Bible called “Reasons to Believe, Revealing God in Science,” click here.
The Jewish festival system is based on the number seven (see the commentary on Genesis Ae – The Number Seven). On the seventh day (the Sabbath) the people rest. Following the seventh week (after Pesach) the harvester’s rest. During the seventh month of Sukkot, the nation rests. Every seventh year (the Sabbatical Year) the land rests. Finally, following seven times seven years (the Year of Jubilee) everything rests. The symbolic significance of the number seven is that it is the number of earthly perfection and rest. There are seven days in the completion of a perfect week, and ADONAI rested on the seventh day after creating the world in six. Therefore, mankind was also commanded to rest on the seventh day, week, month, year and seven times seven years. In these chapters we can also see assigned dates for morning and evening sacrifices (28:3-6), the Sabbath offerings (28:9-10), the offerings on the first of the month (28:11-15), and offerings for various festivals (28:16 to 29:40).
In the context of the book of Numbers, the list of sacrifices and offerings in Chapters 28 and 29 as the means of maintaining order in time, is analogous to the structure of the Israelite camp in Chapters 2 through 4. The camp and its spatial structure, which was centered on God’s holy Presence in its midst, enabled the Exodus generation to move from Egypt through the death march in the desert. The wilderness generation, poised on the doorstep of Canaan, was about to enter the Promised Land, a land of fertility and agricultural seasons and a settled existence of rhythms and order. The festivals and sacrifices described in Chapters 28 and 29 would remind the Israeites of their status as God’s holy people and help them sustain the order of their social and religious life against the forces that would continue to threaten it. Moreover, the large quantities of animals, gain, and wine in the offerings presume a prosperous agricultural life in a fertile land. Thus, the appointed times, sacrifices and offerings offered hope and confidence to the people that they were about to enter a Land of abundance, peace, order, and stability. God’s holy Presence would be in Isra’el’s midst, and God’s holy rhythms of time would order their life.632 This ordering of ADONAI’s time starts with the weekly offering (see Ey – The Sabbath Offerings), then progresses to the monthly offerings (see Ez – The New Moon Offerings), and ends with the yearly offerings (see Fa – The Festival Offerings).
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