Proclaimer Blog
How is Numbers structured and, frankly, who cares?
One of the things we teach students on the Cornhill Training Course is to think carefully through how books of the Bible are put together. They are not just a random collection of thoughts pasted together – this is the prophetic word, written down as "men were carried along by the Holy Spirit." And if preachers are going to be faithful servants of this word, some time thinking how a book is constructed is invaluable.
Of course, it would be easy to simply turn up the next section in the NIV each Monday morning and say "right, that is my passage for next time around." But surely it behoves the preacher to give some thought to how things are put together. How else can he be sure he is being faithful to the original meaning. [BTW, interestingly, some headings have been changed in the new NIV. I was preaching from the of Hebrews 11 this last Sunday and I noticed that the first few verses of chapter 12 have been, rightly I think, added into the previous section.]
Take the book of Numbers. Historically, commentators have tended to take the view that this book is structured geographically. It therefore falls into three major sections – 1. Sinai (chapters 1-12), 2. Kadesh Barnea (chapters 13-19), 3. Moab (chapters 20-36). There is even some warrant for thinking this because at the end of the book God gives a geographical assessment of the wilderness wanderings.
However, if you take this approach, the geographical markers (which are not strong, by the way and sometimes missing) don't allow you to penetrate the overall thrust of the book. Based on this approach, Numbers is little more than a travel journal, of course with lots of interesting stuff on the way, but a travel journal nonetheless. Each section has good and bad and there is no discernible pattern.
However, Dennis Olson (in his Interpretation commentary) suggests a different approach. He argues (convincingly) that Numbers is actually a tale of two generations.
The first generation starts well (Numbers 1-10), then slides downwards (11-20) before coming to an inevitable end (21-25). Don't be like them (which of course is the way Numbers is applied in 1 Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 4). The second generation (Numbers 26-36) is all good, especially the great example of Zelophehad's daughters.
Thus it becomes a tale of two generations – one generation which dies, another which is born.
So who cares? Preachers should care, because this kind of thinking helps planning and preaching and, esepcially, application.