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Numbers 2

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1 And Jehovah speaketh unto Moses, and unto Aaron, saying,

2 `Each by his standard, with ensigns of the house of their fathers, do the sons of Israel encamp; over-against round about the tent of meeting they encamp.'

3 And those encamping eastward towards the sun-rising, [are of] the standard of the camp of Judah, by their hosts; and the prince of the sons of Judah [is] Nahshon, son of Amminadab;

4 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] four and seventy thousand and six hundred.

5 And those encamping by him [are of] the tribe of Issachar; and the prince of the sons of Issachar [is] Nethaneel son of Zuar;

6 and his host, and its numbered ones, [are] four and fifty thousand and four hundred.

7 The tribe of Zebulun; and the prince of the sons of Zebulun [is] Eliab son of Helon;

8 and his host, and its numbered ones, [are] seven and fifty thousand and four hundred;

9 all those numbered of the camp of Judah [are] a hundred thousand, and eighty thousand, and six thousand, and four hundred, by their hosts; they journey first.

10 The standard of the camp of Reuben [is] southward, by their hosts; and the prince of the sons of Reuben [is] Elizur son of Shedeur;

11 and his host, and its numbered ones, [are] six and forty thousand and five hundred.

12 And those encamping by him [are of] the tribe of Simeon; and the prince of the sons of Simeon [is] Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai;

13 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] nine and fifty thousand and three hundred.

14 And the tribe of Gad; and the prince of the sons of Gad [is] Eliasaph son of Reuel;

15 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] five and forty thousand and six hundred and fifty.

16 All those numbered of the camp of Reuben [are] a hundred thousand, and one and fifty thousand, and four hundred and fifty, by their hosts; and they journey second.

17 And the tent of meeting -- the camp of the Levites -- hath journeyed in the midst of the camps; as they encamp so they journey, each at his station by their standards.

18 The standard of the camp of Ephraim, by their hosts, [is] westward; and the prince of the sons of Ephraim [is] Elishama son of Ammihud;

19 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] forty thousand and five hundred.

20 And by him [is] the tribe of Manasseh; and the prince of the sons of Manasseh [is] Gamaliel son of Pedahzur;

21 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] two and thirty thousand, and two hundred.

22 And the tribe of Benjamin; and the prince of the sons of Benjamin [is] Abidan son of Gideoni;

23 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] five and thirty thousand and four hundred.

24 All those numbered of the camp of Ephraim [are] a hundred thousand, and eight thousand, and a hundred, by their hosts; and they journey third.

25 The standard of the camp of Dan [is] northward, by their hosts; and the prince of the sons of Dan [is] Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai;

26 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] two and sixty thousand and seven hundred.

27 And those encamping by him [are of] the tribe of Asher; and the prince of the sons of Asher [is] Pagiel son of Ocran;

28 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] one and forty thousand and five hundred.

29 And the tribe of Naphtali; and the prince of the sons of Naphtali [is] Ahira son of Enan;

30 and his host, and their numbered ones, [are] three and fifty thousand and four hundred.

31 All those numbered of the camp of Dan [are] a hundred thousand, and seven and fifty thousand, and six hundred; at the rear they journey, by their standards.

32 These [are] those numbered of the sons of Israel by the house of their fathers; all those numbered of the camps by their hosts [are] six hundred thousand, and three thousand, and five hundred and fifty.

33 And the Levites have not numbered themselves in the midst of the sons of Israel, as Jehovah hath commanded Moses.

34 And the sons of Israel do according to all that Jehovah hath commanded Moses; so they have encamped by their standards, and so they have journeyed; each by his families, by the house of his fathers.

   

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.