EXPOSITION. • THE CENSUS TAKEN (vers. 17-46). Ver. Notice had in fact been given more than e. '17.-These men. Designated by direct com- month before, and the lists made up, whau mand of God ; yet probably the same, or the poll-tax W&S poid. ~ome of the same, selected by Moses for Ver. 19.-As the Lord commmded ltoses, •obvious personal and social reasons e. short so he numbered them. The usual note of -time before (Exod. xviii. 26). absolute obedience to the Divine instruc- Ver. 18.-0n the first day of the seocmd tions ; but it serves to express the fuude.- .month. The natural meaning is that the mental difference bel ween this nuru\Jeriug .census was completed in one day. If so, the and D:n·i,l's. "census papers," the pedigrees ond family Ver. 21.-Forty and aix tholl8and e.nd futs, must have been reudy beforehand. live hundred. All the numbers (save of Gu.d THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. [oe. 1. 17-46i..
cnly) are in unbroken hundreds. It might 42). •It may, of course, be said that he had have been so arranged by miracle ; but such othor sons not enumerated, but suah an as- an overruling would have no assignable ob- sumption is arbitrary and improballe in the ject, and therefore it is far better to fall back face of the family genealogies in eh. xxvi. on the obvious and natural explanation that If he had any other sons, they did not leave· the totals were approximate. If they were any families behind them. But if the so- simply the poll - tu: figures unaltered, it journing of the Israelites in Egypt was 430 would be natural to suppose that the offer- years, according to the plain statement or ings were made np in fifty-shekel lots, and Exod. xii. 40, even this increase is quite within the offerers divided as nearly as possible into possible, and even probable, limits, consider- hundreds. For military purposes a certain ing the peculiar circumstances and the known number of supernumeraries would be con- fecundity of the race. For if Hushim, who venient. "In the one excepted case of Gad a came into Egypt with his grandfather, nad half-hundred appears for some unexplained only three sons born to him within the next aiuse. twenty-five years, and if his descendanl;IJ Ver. 24.-Gad. He is here ranked im- doubled themselves every quarter of a cen- mediately after Reuben and Simeon, because tury, which is not an uncommon rate of. in, he was placed with them in the encampment crease under certain circumstances, then hia (see abovP, ver. 5). numbers woulu have fully reached 200,000 by Ver. 26.-Iudah. The immense and dis- the time of the exodus. Perhaps the most rroportionate increase of Judah is no doubt puzzling feature about the increase is. the a difficulty in itself; but it is quite iu keep- great inequality with which it was spread ing with the character assigned to him 1D over the various tribes, a fact of which we P:ophecy and the part played by him in cannot even suggest any explanation. history. Ver. 46. -Six hundred thousand anll Ver. 32.--0f the children of101eph. Both three thousand and fl.ve tnndrecl and fifty. are numbered as separate tribes, but Ephraim See Exod. xxxviii. 26. Ast he adult male Le- already takes precedence, not as being larger, vites numbered about 10,000, this represents which is not considered in this list, but an increase of 13,000 since the exodus. Some according to prophecy (Gen. rlviii 5, 14). 111ousands had died through the Divine dis- Ver. •38.-0f the children of Dan. The pleasure, but, on the other hand, the natural enormous nu.mericol increase in this tribe is mortality may have ceased. It was evidently the more remarkable because it is clearly in the purpose of God that all who crossed intimated that Da.n had but one son, Hushim tho Red Sea should also enter their promised or Shnham (Gen. rlvi. 23; Numb. xxvi land.
HOMILETICS. Vers. 17--46.-God'., army. We have here, spiritually, the army of the living- God numbered and arrayed unto the march and the victory. Consider, therefore- That it would appear, as far as we can gatiler from the increase in numbers, that none had died since the e:xodus, eave through disobedience and idolatry. Even so, none can perish or be lost from the vast army which hae come through the Red Sea of the blood of Christ, eave through their own disobedience, through departing· in their heart from the living God, and makin"' them other gods. The armies of Goa do not and cannot decrease by death, by viofence, or accident: such things have no- dominion over them; only sin can separate from the society of the elect, from tl1e- communion of saints.
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 44-46.-The two numherings in tlie wilderneas. The Bible abounds in atatietica. Tile historical books, in particular, bristle with genealogies and censue- tablee. " Numbers'' gets its name from the circumstance that it contains the tabulated results of two distinct numberings. The statistical chapters arc commonly passed over in the consecutive reading of the Scripture, in the family, and in the- Church. The wine of the kingdom does not flow from them freely; all the rather ought care to be taken to read and expound them occasionally. Al I Scripture is profitable; and the statistical cilapters, hard and barren as they look, are ni> exception. CR. l. 17--46.] THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. 7