NOTES for Num 3:1-51
The Book of Numbers clearly sets out all the Levites’ duties at the Tabernacle, taking account of every clan in the tribe of Levi. A place and task are found for everyone, and each person’s place is defined clearly and unambiguously. It may seem that there is a complete absence of freedom here, a religious formalism that could easily have been dispensed with. We ourselves often think that when God’s work is concerned there is no need for clear regulations or a clearly organized work process, because God will somehow “arrange everything Himself”: it is His work, after all. Perhaps this would be true if we were perfect human beings or spirits.
Then there would truly be no need either to plan the work or to organize it externally: a direct instruction from God, properly understood by those carrying it out, would be enough. We, however, are fallen human beings, with all the consequences that follow, including those that concern organization. Unfortunately, we usually do not hear God’s instructions directly. If they are passed on through someone, then at the very least that one person must be in charge of the whole undertaking and bear responsibility for it. Moreover, rhythms and algorithms play a large role in the fallen world.
Our lives contain too many automatic habits, which appear wherever and whenever our actions diverge from our awareness. At the Tabernacle everyone had first of all to stand before God, because everything he did was done in God’s presence. Yet ritual actions regularly repeated in the sanctuary can easily become routine, turning into those very automatic habits. If a person knows beforehand exactly what lies ahead, what he intends and is required to do before God, he has more opportunity not to lapse into that routine.
One can escape automatism either into complete unpredictability or into absolute monotony, the kind that sets one’s teeth on edge and therefore cannot go unnoticed, while automatism is frightening above all precisely because it goes unnoticed. A monotonous religious ritual is bearable only when every moment of its performance is fully conscious. This certainly does not come easily, but all the conditions for it had been created at the Tabernacle. The rest depended on the ministers themselves.