Year 1, Day 134: Numbers 19

Dealing with the Unseen and Unreadable

Something happens today in Numbers 19 that nobody sees.  Most scholars assume that this passage’s timeline jumps the vast majority of the 40 years wandering in the dessert.  It wasn’t too long ago that the Hebrew people were beginning their journey as they left Mount Sinai behind them.  It was only a few chapters ago where they were wrestling with whether or not they can take Canaan.  Now in the story they are already nearing the end of their wanderings.

You might be wondering why people come to this conclusion.  Remember, this is just a speculation because there are very few textual clues upon which we can draw.  But here are the main reasons. 

• First, in this chapter we have a lot of instruction about dead bodies.  The primary concern for dead bodies would be as the evil generation dies off in larger numbers, which would have happened at the end of the journey.  After all, when that generation is dead, the next generation can go into the Promised Land!
• Second, in the upcoming chapter we have the death of both Miriam and Aaron.  That clues us in that we’re getting ready to change leadership.
• Third, it won’t be too many chapters before we talk about Joshua as successor to Moses.  That’s a big clue that we are getting close to the end of the journey.

 Tying these things together helps us understand that Numbers has now brought us close to the end of the wandering.

Dealing with Dead Bodies

So, what can we learn here?  Well, I apparently learned the lesson about touching dead bodies when we studied it before in scripture.  Immediately upon reading this text my brain said: “Remember the cult o f the Egyptians and other neighboring countries.  When a person died, friends and family mourned over their loss – turning the mourning service into a service of worshipping an idol.”  For many ancient cultures, ancestor worship was a big thing.  Some cultures believed their ancestors became gods.  Others believed their ancestors continued to exist, just on a different plane of existence. 

Ever hear anyone today talk about feeling like their deceased relative is still with them?  That is a cultural throwback to thousands of years of ancestor worship and our human inability to let them go!  It is inherent to who we are as human beings.  We cannot let go, so we invent and devise means of holding on.

The point is that hanging around dead bodies for too long brings about the perspective of seeing the ancestor for more than they are and at some level beginning to worship them.  God wants to be clear with the people: He is God, the dead relative is not.  There is nothing wrong with burying them, but it will make a person ritually unclean.  That ritual uncleanliness is there to remind someone that what we are doing is spiritually dangerous if we let it go beyond simply treating the body with respect.  If we let our thoughts and minds get out of control, we can be headed down the road of ancestor worship far too quickly and easily.  If we aren’t direful at times when important people in our life die, we can find ourselves straying from the worship of God.

Timeline for Uncleanliness

Just to strengthen my point about the ritual uncleanliness regarding contact with the dead, notice that there is a specific timeline given for washing.  The period of uncleanliness lasts seven days.  On the third day, there is to be cleansing.  On the seventh day there is also to be cleansing.  If this was not a ritually and spiritually motivated cleansing, why would the third and the seventh days be lifted up?  If this were a physical cleansing, what would be served by washing on those specific days?

The number three has always been considered the number of the divine in Hebrew and Christian cultures.  The number seven is the spiritual number for completeness (deriving out of Genesis and creation).  So the uncleanliness that comes from association with dead things is purified by specifically washing on a day that is to remind us about the divinity of God and it is finished on the spiritual day of completeness.  The point is simple: God is God, the dead person is not.  Even in our uncleanliness we are reminded that our cleanliness comes only from the divine.

So why make a big deal out of all of this timeline?  Culturally speaking, we tend to brush it under the rug.  Modern ‘civilized’ beings in the First World are really good at not even caring anymore about the little things we do that undermine our reliance upon God.  We don’t care that we are really practicing in ancestor worship – although we’d never stoop to call it that!  We don’t think to examine the little things enough to care that we are subtly undermining our declaration of God as being the sole source of life in our lives.  As modern people, we brush aside the ritual nature as we go about our busy lives thinking that it really isn’t important.  We as civilized beings are so good at doing this that it is scary.  Occasionally we need to make a big deal out of something that was so clear to an ancient people and yet is so foreign to a civilized people.

God is God.  We are not.  None of us.  Even our blessed dead are not God.  He alone is God.

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