NOTES for Num 10:1-36
The Book of Numbers describes the people's movement through the wilderness not as nomads moving from one camp to another, and not even as a military campaign, but rather as a solemn procession headed by God Himself. It is no accident that here we hear about those sacred trumpets, which were sounded not only in danger but also on great feasts. From here come the angelic trumpets of prophetic and apocalyptic visions: each announced a new revelation, a new age, a new word of God, but above all the very entrance of God into the world, into history, and into human life, without which there would be no sacred history, no Bible describing it, and no coming of the Messiah.
That is why the people's journey through the wilderness resembles a solemn religious procession. This is not about some particular feast or separate event, however important. It is about History with a capital H, which itself became an Event, also with a capital E. This History with a capital H became the content of the Book of Numbers, and of the whole Pentateuch as well: the main acting person here is God, leading His people to the land promised to them. Yet the people too are an inseparable part of this Event, part of History. Without them there would be neither one nor the other: there would remain only God reigning over the world, dwelling somewhere so high above it that one could no longer speak of His entering this world.
We are used to thinking that the Incarnation is discussed only in the New Testament books, in the Gospel. In reality the whole Bible bears witness to it, only in different ways. The Incarnation is impossible without God's encounter with an individual person and without His entering the life of concrete people, and then of all humanity; as in the time of the patriarchs, this happens through personal encounters and events. God enters the life of humanity through concrete historical events inseparably tied to a concrete people whom He created specifically in order to reveal Himself to the world and to history.
At the end of time, within the people, the Event occurs that completes history: the birth of the Messiah, through whom God enters the world in all fullness. And this fullness is deeply conscious, because the Messiah knows Himself as the Son of God from the very beginning of His earthly existence. Thus History is completed, and the Kingdom begins.