The Shape of Numbers – Part Three

We continue the analysis of Numbers with the third of the five major cycles.

Read Part One. Read Part Two.

ANALYSIS CONTINUED

ETHICS: Leviticus – Holy Place
Laws for living in the Land; the Priesthood challenged; rulers cut off; “firstfruits” victories
(Numbers 15-21)

The third major cycle purifies Israel after the nation’s failure to take God at His word. The promises are reiterated in an Edenic format (Creation), but this is followed by a “Noahic” rebellion (Division). The Aaronic priesthood is then described as a sacrificial “tower” (Ascension), followed by mediated purification rites for commoners in contact with death (Testing). Conflict from the old world between brothers and sisters reaches its conclusion (Maturity), followed by an “Adamic” day of judgment (Conquest). Unlike cycle 2, cycle 3 ends with victory instead of defeat, a sign that, despite the nation’s failures, God would still honor His promises to Abraham (Glorification).

• The Genesis cycle implicitly reconfirms the promise to Abraham by describing offerings referring to the fruit of the land and of the womb (as animal substitutes). The stipulations concerning unintentional sins also relate to Eden, where Eve was led astray but Adam sinned with a high hand. The sudden shift to the execution of a Sabbathbreaker and directions regarding tassels on robes is explained by the sevenfold sequence of the chapter. Identifying the matrix pattern reveals the purpose of each step. The Sabbathbreaker is judged as the “Adam” who has reviled corporate worship, breaking the commandment in Exodus 35:3: the only fire on the day of rest was to be the glory of God. A household fire on the Sabbath was a strange fire, a sin against the entire congregation, much as any false religion, philosophy, ideology or heresy is a sin against all mankind, a fire that must be stamped out before it consumes all the people. As God executed the sons of Aaron, so God’s people executed this son of man. This is followed by the investiture of every adult Israelite with a robe, the Old Covenant equivalent of New Covenant baptism. Just as the red cords of Tamar and Rahab symbolized a succession of flesh, so these four blue tassels pictures the rivers of Eden, a succession of faithful obedience. The red (as Levitical sex-and-death) and blue (as Davidic life-and-healing) are the keys to understanding the healing of the woman who touched the “wing” of Jesus’ garment. The robe prefigured the time when all the Lord’s people, “both men and women,” would be prophets, a natural humaniform mountain covered in a supernatural bridal city. As the Day 7 of the sequence, it aptly alludes to the robes of righteousness that Adam and Eve would have received had she been rescued from being led astray by her leader. Perhaps this also explains the inclusion of foreigners in the worship, a symbol of the ultimate goal of Israel’s purpose, pictured also in the marriage of Ruth to Boaz.

• The rebellion of Korah combines the concepts of Hierarchy and Division in a negative way. God later warned Israel that a king would require tributes from the people well over and above what was required by the priests. The accusation against Moses and Aaron was that they had exalted themselves above their brothers, but, as Moses, says, he had not taken as much as a donkey from them. The real issue was a desire to return to the old Noahic order of priest-kings (such as Jethro and Melchizedek) where every tribal ruler conducted worship. The Lord calls for a showdown, like that between Elijah and the priests of Baal. Just like the unspoken ironies earlier in the book (You want meat? I’ll give you meat! You want white? I’ll give you white!), the threat here is “You want Division (Hierarchy)? I’ll give you division!” The rebels are set apart and sent to the “altar of the abyss,” the liturgical doppelgänger of the altar of God, and the imagery suggests that God considered their incense to be brimstone (Isaiah 1:13). The first-century Judaizers committed the opposite sin—an unwillingness to submit to Jesus’ Melchizedekian order, so they are described as locusts from a smoking abyss (Revelation 9:2). This first half of the sequence brings death, so the second half brings fragrant resurrection, the budding and blossoming of Aaron’s staff. The almonds relate it to the “seven-eyed” Lampstand, the “watcher” tree (the Hebrew word almond sounds like “watch” (see Exodus 25:31-40; Jeremiah 1:11-12; Matthew 6:22-23). The Noahic order was corrupted, so worship was now centralized on earth in this new, man-made Eden.
• The vindication of the Aaronic order continues with a reminder that although the Levites had no earthly inheritance, they received the very best of the fruit of the land. Notice: 1) that the firstborn of man and the firstborn of unclean beasts, both being “kingly heirs” in the natural realm, needed to be redeemed; 2) God took a tithe of the tithe, representing a “fractal” ziggurat of holiness that ascended to heaven; 3) the Levites themselves were considered as a sacrificial tithe. The scheme relates to the principle established in Eden: submission to heaven (as a firstfruits: the priesthood) brings dominion on earth (a full harvest: the kingdom).
• The purification laws symbolically restrained the contagion of Adamic death. The detailed stipulations appear to be arcane until it is understood that each item corresponds to an element of the Tabernacle (in the same way that the animals in Genesis 15 did). The point is that each person is a Tabernacle for God, a “Garden-Sanctuary” that must not be defiled by Adamic death. Notice the reference to Day 3 and Day 7 as the points of promise (forming) and fulfillment (filling) in the Creation Week. The heifer is the Bronze Altar, a “female” (that is, national) version of the bull that symbolized the rulers on the Day of Atonement, hence the blood is sprinkled seven times as it is in Leviticus 16:14. The cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn are the three items in the Holy Place: the hyssop (possibly the aromatic herb, “ezov”) signifies the Incense Altar, the scarlet thread signifies the Table of Showbread (which alone was covered with an extra scarlet veil under the common coverings, Numbers 4:8), the cedarwood, a source of medicinal oil, signified a “common” equivalent of the Lampstand, the tree of (kingly) anointing, and the vessel was the Bronze Laver. Notice another prefiguring of New Covenant baptism: the priest who mediated this cleansing had to wash his entire body and his clothes. Those who identify baptism with the sprinkling upon the commoner are identifying with the wrong person. Sprinkling extends the old life. Immersion extinguishes it. The priest/mediator had to symbolically die to provide the ritual healing. Paul refers to this as “baptism for the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:29). New Covenant baptizands are not the unclean but the mediators, royal priests who voluntarily lay down their lives and rise again on behalf of others.
• The Deuteronomy step has the deaths of Miriam and Aaron as somber bookends to God’s judgment upon Moses for striking the rock in anger. None of the three siblings would enter the Promised Land. This was also necessary typologically, since the Law would become obsolete before Israel’s priestly ministry concluded and the Church began the conquest of the World. The center of the cycle is Moses’ request for passage through Edom, with Edom’s unbrotherly response at the Trumpets step. This, too, relates to the first-century, prefiguring the opposition of the Edomite Herods to the Firstfruits Church.
• The Joshua step mixes the themes of Conquest and Atonement, with victory against a Canaanite king in the Negev, and the salvation from the poison of red serpents provided by a bronze snake on a pole. These fiery serpents are related to the seraphim seen by Isaiah in the court of God, the Lord who himself comes against Israel with a “tail” that fills the temple. The irony here is that, as in the court of Pharaoh, Moses’ serpent “swallows up” the curse in victory. There is also the imagery of the ubiquitous “head and body” pattern found in the two approaches of the High Priest on Yom Kippur: Jesus alone would be lifted up as the serpent in the wilderness (His first coming), but the multiplying Apostolic Church would have to deal with the den of snakes in Jerusalem (His second coming). Finally, the Song of the Well relates to the Laver, another step 6 element that relates to the spring of Eden and the womb-well of Eve’s fertility.
• The judgment of the Amorite kings, Sihon and the giant Og, relates to God’s word to Abraham that the land would not be given to his children for four generations because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). Although the conquest had been delayed for one generation due to Israel’s disobedience, these victories were a kind of firstfruits—Israel would come again to Canaan as a nation of judges.

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