Category Archives : Numbers (Rayburn)

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v.3       “Shittim” means “acacia trees,” the trees no doubt gave their name to the place. The full place name, which we read in 33:49, is “Abel-Shittim” which means…

We considered last time the wonderfully interesting and entertaining account of Balaam and his donkey and pointed out that the donkey could be made a spokesman for the Lord even against his nature and the same would be the case for Balaam. He would s…

The next section of the book of Numbers contains our chapters 22 – 24. It is too long a passage to read at one sitting so we will consider it over two Lord’s Day evenings, taking only chapter 22 this evening. But it is important to remember that thes…

Israel skirted Edom on the south and east, then made its way north along the plateau some miles east of the Dead Sea. Moab lies on the fertile high ground on the eastern side of the Dead Sea north of Edom and Israel traveled north by keeping to the e…

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v.4

They were going around Edom because, as we read in chapter 20, Edom had refused Israel passage through its territory.

v.5

This, thankfully, is the last recorded incident of Is…

Remember now, the forty years in the wilderness are almost over. The time alloted to cleanse Israel of its unbelieving adults is over. Our attention now turns to the Promised Land, to Canaan, which this new generation of Israelites will occupy now th…

Wherever precisely in the text of Numbers we moved from the early days of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness to the latter days, we are now, in chapter 20, near the end of the forty years. Miriam’s death was noted in 20:1. Now we have the more elabor…

Had Israel showed some faith and backbone at Kadesh Barnea when the scouts reported on the trip they had taken through Canaan, she would have moved into the Promised Land from the Negev, the southern desert. She would have come into Canaan from the s…

We have before us this evening one of the most fascinating and, in a sense, troubling episodes in the entire Bible. In the middle ages the famous Jewish rabbi, Moses Maimonides, called our text one of the most difficult problems in the Torah and mode…

Numbers chapter 19 deals with the ceremonial uncleanness contracted through death and contact with the dead and the means to remove it. The ritual that we are about to read strikes modern readers often as so much mumbo-jumbo [Wenham, 146]. They take …