Year 1, Day 141: Numbers 26

Genealogy

Alright, we have another list chapter.  And that’s okay.  Read through the list.  In fact, you can probably skim most of this chapter (except the first and last paragraph) and not miss much.  But I will draw us to three quick conclusions.

No Increase In The Wilderness

First, compare the total number in this chapter verses that given in Numbers 1.  You’ll notice that the number does not go up.  That should be striking to us.  The Hebrew people spent 400+ years in Egypt and the Lord increased their number of men from 12 to 600,000.*  If you follow the asterisk below, you’ll find an argument presupposing that a birthrate of 3.4 children will accomplish this task, so it isn’t even a difficult task!  So here’s the point: if their numbers can go up so easily, we should take serious note when the numbers here don’t go up at all.

Yes, life in the wilderness is hard.  Yes, God said that all in the perverse generation would die before going into the Promised Land.  But the numbers still go down – even after the kids of the perverse generation are having their own kids and adding it to the tally.  My point is simple.  When we go against God, we should not expect His blessing.  The fact that there is a decrease to the numbers given in the two lists within the book of Numbers should point us to the implications of living a life without God’s blessing.  When we go against God, we should not expect increase, bounty, or even satisfaction.  It just isn’t going to happen.

Context of the Lack of Increase

Second, note that this list comes immediately after the story about the Midianite culture war.  The fact that we have a counting – an even worse, a blunt description that none of the previous generation were left – immediately after the Midianite culture war tells us the severity of the culture war.  The Midianite culture war was the tombstone of the perverse generation.  It was the end of them.  It was their final act of disobedience.  It is how they will be remembered.  They lusted after the world and didn’t take the time to care about God.  They died in their lusts while having false confidence in the label “God’s people.”

Culture War

I meant what I said yesterday.  Those who follow God are always engaged in a culture war.  The world is always attempting to corrupt us and pull us away from God.  The world is always giving us more important things to do than to be with God.  For the record, our own internal human nature is likewise doing the same thing!  We are not only at war with our culture, but we wage war within ourselves.  It is nothing to be taken lightly. 

Just as this list illustrates the tombstone of the previous generation, so will another list illustrate our tombstone.  One day, we too will die.  There will be a counting of those who enter into the Promised Land.  I wonder, how many of us will be on that list?  How important is it to us right now while we are alive and distracted by this world?  It clearly wasn’t very important to that particular generation of Hebrew people.

Joshua and Caleb and the People of Promise

Finally, notice that Joshua and Caleb are left in the promise.  Yes, we still have yet to go through the stories of the death of Moses.  But barring a few loose ends to wrap up, watch the marked change in the behavior of the Hebrew people here.  Nobody is perfect – and the Hebrew people will stumble from time to time.  But with the perverse generation behind us, notice how when we start Joshua that the people do much more listening.  God is not only a God of judgment and wrath, but He is a God of promise and hope to those who love Him and listen to Him.  That is something we can glean by noticing that God is true to His promise to Joshua, Caleb, and the younger generation.

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*For those of you wondering, this isn’t really even radical growth.  We can assume 20 generations (20 years for each male to become the age for being able to make an heir) in 400 years, and we know they were in Egypt for at least 400 years.  Doing a little math gives a simple equation: 600,000 = 12x²⁰.  In that equation, X represents the rate of growth.  Dividing both sides by 12, taking the log of both sides, dividing both sides by 20, and then taking that answer as an exponent to 10 gives the rate.  That rate is simply 1.7.  That’s an easy growth rate to accomplish, and the population size would not be large enough to begin to produce too many prohibitive factors against life (food quantity, living space, etc).  Oh, and for the record, we should remember that I’m dealing with only males, so that 1.7 birthrate actually means a 3.4 birthrate of children both male and female.  It is not uncommon at all to think of bronze age families having 3-4 children successfully reaching adulthood and producing their own offspring.

To illustrate this point, I drew up a little chart.  The first column shows the generation number.  The second column shows the total number of adult males who have already produced offspring in the community.  The third column shows the number of males ready to produce offspring.  The fourth column shows the number of viable male offspring reaching adulthood produced at a rate of 1.7 (I rounded to eliminate decimals, but the calculations are based on non-rounded numbers).  The fifth column represents how many adult males in the community have reached the age of death.  The last column gives the total number of adults by adding the second and third column while subtracting away the fifth column.  As you can see, this kind of population growth is not difficult to accomplish at the small levels of population presented here.  And yes, in the grand scheme of things 600,000 males was not terribly large even for the bronze age!

1	0	12	20	0	12
2	12	20	35	0	32
3	32	35	59	12	55
4	67	59	100	20	106
5	126	100	171	35	192
6	226	171	290	59	338
7	397	290	493	100	587
8	687	493	839	171	1,010
9	1,180	839	1,426	290	1,729
10	2,019	1,426	2,425	493	2,952
11	3,445	2,425	4,124	839	5,032
12	5,870	4,124	7,012	1,426	8,568
13	9,994	7,012	11,923	2,425	14,581
14	17,006	11,923	20,274	4,124	24,805
15	28,929	20,274	34,474	7,012	42,191
16	49,203	34,474	58,620	11,923	71,754
17	83,677	58,620	99,678	20,274	122,023
18	142,297	99,678	169,494	34,474	207,501
19	241,975	169,494	288,209	58,620	352,848
20	411,468	288,209	490,074	99,678	600,000