Saturday 15th March 2025

NUMBERS 2 and 3
As well as individuals, there was a careful arrangement of each clan in their encampment around the tabernacle. Three camps to the East, under the authority of Judah, three to the South, under Reuben, three to the West under Ephraim, and three to the North under Dan. All these camps were a significant distance from the tabernacle in the centre; the Levites set up their camp surrounding the tabernacle and acting as a kind of buffer between the holy places and the rest of Israel. That was just as well, considering that anyone else who wandered inadvertently near the tabernacle would be put to death. (Careful how you sleepwalk!)

If you think that policing a large football match takes a lot of logistical planning and careful execution, then try dealing with fifty football match crowds all at once! By breaking the exercise down into its subunits of clans and families, and by designating trustworthy leaders at each level, and by communicating well with these leaders, a total chaotic free-for-all was happily avoided. The test of effective leadership in God’s church is how well it trains up its next generation of leaders and how well it communicates with them, envisions them, and trusts them to themselves disciple others. This discipleship methodology does not just work for organisation but also for growth in the church.

Every powerful and effective community needs a group of people who are committed full-time to the service and work of that community. They cannot have normal ‘day jobs’ and cannot have the distractions of ownership that others are permitted. In the church there are full-time leaders, administrators, and gift ministries; in Israel at that time, there were the Levites. They were not permitted to own land in the way that the other clans were, and their food came from the tithes that the other clans provided. Their very lives had been set apart by the Lord for serving in the tabernacle and its courtyard – although not in the very close proximity in which the priests ministered. God had a head-count done of all the Levite males, subdivided into the family branches of Gershon, Kohath and Merari; total = 22,000. Then he had counted the number of firstborn males from the rest of Israel; total = 22,273. The agreement was that all the Levites were taken by the Lord as substitutes for all the firstborn of Israel (who had been dedicated to him previously). God, being a sharp accountant (!), noted that the 273 extra Israelite firstborn sons had not been ‘paid’ for and so asked for silver from each to make up the shortfall.

The position of the twelve land-owning clans’ encampments had already been defined (in the previous chapter) and now the Levite groupings of Gershon, Kohath and Merari were similarly positioned to the North, South, and West of the tabernacle. The place of honour, East, in the direction of the rising sun, was reserved for the priests and for Moses – who all happened to be descended from Kohath.