Numbers 2

CONCLUDING NOTE.

With respect to the area of this camp there is much difference of opinion. If it were so arranged as to be completely filled, we could approximate its area by assigning a requisite number of square feet to each person. But there was an unoccupied space between the tabernacle, with its Levitical custodians, and the sides of the quadrilateral. Since the breadth of this space is not given in the plan of the camp, we are left to conjecture its size. The camp was probably larger relatively than the Roman military castra, which were always fortified. The Hebrews never fortified, and hence had not the same reason for compression. It is evident from Numbers 10:2-8, that every part of the camp was to be within the sound of the silver trumpet. They could all see the brazen serpent lifted up on a pole near the tabernacle. Numbers 21:9. It is supposed that the length of the sabbath-day’s journey was fixed at two thousand cubits, because this was the distance from the tabernacle to the extremities of the camp, but there is no scriptural proof of this. Nor does the statute granting to the Levites a strip of land two thousand cubits wide around their cities (Numbers 35:4-5) prove that there was exactly this space between the tabernacle and the side of the camp. The Jewish writers do not agree, but the most common opinion among them is, that the circumference was twelve miles. Scheuchzer makes its area twelve square miles.

An inspection of Solomon’s temple and its successor, with the outer and inner court, and its temple proper, ο ναος , divided into the holy and the most holy place, will show that it is but a crystallization of this fluent camp. But this typifies more than the structure reared on Mount Moriah. Its antitype, or, rather, its eternal ideal and archetype, is the “holy city, the new Jerusalem, having the glory of God, and a wall great and high, and twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” This is “the camp of the saints.” Revelation 20:9.

The camp in the wilderness, before reaching the table-lands of Moab, was seldom laid out in the regular manner here indicated, on account of the unevenness of the ground. But when Balaam gazed upon it from “the top of the rocks,” spread out upon the plain, its symmetry and beauty extorted from his unwilling tongue these words of admiration: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel!” Could the eyes of unbelievers in modern times be anointed to see the inner, spiritual beauty of the “camp of the saints, the family of God on the earth, the Church of the firstborn written in heaven,” similar exclamations of wonder and praise would burst from their lips.