NOTES for Num 1:1-54
The Book of Numbers did not receive its name by accident: there really are many numbers in it. True, this name was given to it by translators, while in Hebrew it is called, like all the books of the Pentateuch, by the first word of the first chapter. The impression, however, is conveyed correctly, at least the first impression: the book is full of numbers. All kinds of them. Like a statistical report or an account book. Why? For what purpose?
Those who ask themselves and others such questions seem to suppose from the very beginning that numbers are an unspiritual matter. Or at least certainly a boring one. God has everything in immeasurable abundance, so why are numbers needed? True, there are no exact sciences without numbers, but surely they are not needed in communion with God; after all, this is not mathematics. For Pythagoras and his followers, for example, all cosmic harmony was connected with number, but that was Pythagoras. And also, to be sure, Plato, but he too was a pagan, like Pythagoras.
Meanwhile, on closer examination, number turns out to be something very spiritual indeed. Not because number lies at the foundation of world harmony, though that question is still open. The point, after all, is not world harmony, but ourselves. Fear of number in our life is often connected with fear of concreteness. Of precision. Of unambiguity, where it is necessary. Of that very thing without which it is difficult to speak seriously about spiritual life. For spiritual life is not floating in pink and blue daydreams, but quite real life. Just as dense, reliable, and tangible as our ordinary life, only fuller and more spacious. More capacious. It contains all the numbers of this world, and everything that stands behind them too. Unlike a statistical report or an account book, where the numbers are abstract.
As in this list of men able to bear arms from all twelve Hebrew tribes: they are certainly not listed here by accident. This is an army, or rather a tribal militia, ready to go and conquer the land promised by God. For us these are only numbers and the names of tribes. For God they are specific people, with whom He Himself will go to fight where He sends them. Here the main difference becomes clear between the numbers in an account book or a statistical report and the numbers in the Book of Numbers: those numbers are with people, these are with God. With God, for whom truly no one is forgotten.