34: Bamidbar
Welcome to TLDR Torah: a synopsis of the weekly parsha based on Robert Alter’s translation, plus a question to spur your Shabbat dinner (or any!) conversation.
Parsha Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20)
TLDR:
Roll call in the wilderness! It’s fitting that Bamidbar, or “The Book of Numbers” kicks off with a detailed census of the tribes.
The people don’t expect to stroll peacefully into Israel. Anticipating warfare, they organize themselves into “battalions.”
Tribe by tribe, the parsha counts the number of combat-ready males aged 20 and older, amounting to ~600k people (note: an enormous number compared to later Roman armies). The Levites are excluded from service since they need to oversee the Tabernacle.
The tribes organize themselves in a protective square around the tabernacle, roughly equal on the North-South and East-West axes. (note: if you thought there were 12 tribes, Joseph was later split into Manasseh and Ephraim. But 12 has a better ring to it than 13).
The elite Levites split into four groups and form an inner circle guarding the Tabernacle. Each group has their unique guard-duty responsibilities.
What follows is a strange section about Moses comparing the number of firstborn males with the the number of Levites, coming up short by 273 people. The Levites were seen as “substitutes” to firstborns, which were somehow “owed” to God. Confused? Become more confused.
Levites serve from ages 30 to 50, implying they require more training. The Kohathites especially have to be careful not to touch anything sacred and die.
Question:
The camp organization is an intuitive formation. How else might you have set it up?
Relatedly: The Levites are clearly elevated spatially since, as the inner ring, they are closest to the Tabernacle. They also defend the Tabernacle from internal threats, and are furthest from the front lines should there be an external attack. If the Torah was concerned about a show of egalitarianism, it might have scattered the Levites across the tribes equally, or assigned special representatives from each tribe to serve in the temple. Is it a coincidence that the writer(s) include the passage about how Levites are serving in place of the firstborns? Or is it intended to mitigate (at the time, and then later when the Torah was written), concerns about the Levites’ special status? How have other societies justified a group’s specialness on the basis of their sacrifice, born into or attained in life?