Numbers 1-20

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2002 by Brueggemann, Dale A

He tracks more than just themes and subject matter to outline his commentary. He also highlights other structural indicators, such as grammatical keys, chiasm, mnemonics, and rhetorical devices (42-43). To display these structural indicators, he makes copious use of tables, indents, and other spatial typographical layout to set off such things as lists and chiasm.

On the problem of the large numbers that revolve around the meaning of ASH (thousand or perhaps something like clan), he says, "The issue is not whether the population of Israelites could not have mathematically risen to such a figure during the four hundred plus year [sic] of the Egyptian sojourn, or that God could or could not have provided ample food resources in the Sinai region in which only a few thousand people reside today." Rather, internal and external problems push us to study the issue (p. 78). Then he lists various suggested solutions, opting for hyperbolic numbers (e.g. numbers multiplied by ten), which signify fulfillment of the Abrahamic seed promise (p. 79). Levine rejects attempts to make ... mean anything other than "thousand" in these counts (1.139). He treats them as a "sexigesimal system" using multiples of sixty. Of course, he sees little historical significance for these numbers, so he sees little difficulty in reading large numbers here.

In his treatment of God's defense of Moses as prophet par excellence, Cole cautions that Moses could not have seen God's face, or he would have died (p. 205). This harmonization with Exodus 33 weakens the text's own face-to-face emphasis, which Numbers uses as the basis of Moses' superiority over other true, but ordinary, prophets. They do not see God face-to-face.

Cole provides helpful linguistic notes, such as the note connecting "redemption" (ped(tye, root pdda) to the Akkadian legal texts. He says the cognate pada denotes payment to free indentured slaves (Num 3:41-51) and notes, "Israel was indebted to God for deliverance of their firstborn" at the Passover (p. 99). He also notes that the redemption price was five shekels, "the standard price of a slave in the Late Bronze Age in Egypt" (p. 100). He concludes with a treatment of the doctrine of redemption in the Old and New Testaments. By way of contrast, Levine gives (1) a brief note about padah, noting how God gave Israel freedom from Egyptian bondage with references to Mic 6:4 and Dent 21:8, which mention the same idea; (2) a reference to redemption of the land (Lev 25:25-28); and (3) a note distinguishing the "sanctuary weight" from the royal standard (e.g. 2 Sam 14:26) (1.162).

Cole finds significant "parallels between the Book of Balaam and the rest of Numbers." Notable is the occurrence of the same prophetic formula that is used for Moses, who is absent from this account (p. 382). Levine considers the Balaam account to be an insertion with no connections to the rest of the book. Cole considers the Balaam oracles to be ancient. He follows Albright and Wenham, who date them to the twelfth-eleventh centuries on the basis of terms, literary structures, and grammar and spelling (p. 403). But Levine dates the material to the eighth century.