Numbers 3

This chapter has the enumeration of the Levites, their duties, and the substitution of the first-born. As is generally true, most of the writings available on these chapters have the nature of an extended harangue on the numbers in this section of the book, whether or not they are accurately reported, or if they are "fabricated,"[1] or that maybe the word for "thousand" originally meant merely, "squads," "families," or some other unit far smaller than "thousand."

These numbers in Moses' fourth book present no problem whatever to the believer.

(1) If the numbers are exactly accurate in all respects, the only problem would be connected with how so vast a multitude could be maintained in the kind of environment the Sinai area is supposed to have been during Israel's sojourn there. But where is the problem? Is anything too hard for God? Our holy text makes it perfectly clear that God Himself provided the food and drink for that whole era of forty years. The people who have trouble with this evidently know nothing of the God of the Bible.

(2) If, as strongly suggested by some writers, the word here rendered "thousand(s)" actually meant something else originally, then, in this particular, the Masoretic Text would be in error, but, of course, there is no evidence whatever to support such a view. However, even if such an error could be revealed here and there in the Holy Bible, the effect would be of as little consequence as a fly-speck on the Washington Monument. We do not believe any error exists in these numbers, but if God did indeed allow, through the weakness of men, some little flaw now and then in the Sacred Scriptures, it would have been by design to test the faith of his children. If people are going to believe merely those things that appear "reasonable" to them, the whole character of true faith in God is already destroyed. How REASONABLE could it have been to Abraham that he should slay his son Isaac as a SACRIFICE to God, when that same God had promised through that son Isaac to make Abraham's posterity as numerous as the stars of heaven?

We shall not, therefore, waste any more time by exploring the controversy about these numbers, but shall attempt to interpret them as they stand in the text.