Today we begin Numbers Chapter 35.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James Version, click here.
“In the plains of Mo’ab by the Yarden, across from Yericho, Adonai said to Moshe, “Order the people of Isra’el to give to the Levites cities to live in from the heritage they will possess, and you are also to give the Levites some of the open land surrounding the cities.”-Numbers 35:1-2
Numbers Chapter 35 starts off with two reminders.
The first reminder is that Moses is currently in the process of dividing and parceling out the land to the 9.5 tribes who will be living in the land of Canaan.
The second reminder is that at this point in time, Israel is still residing in the Transjordan (the former territory of Moab on the eastern side of the Jordan River).
We’re then told quick speed that the tribes were to assign certain cities and towns to be given to the Levites to live in (a total of 48 cities were to be given).
These cities were to be the Levites’ permanent possessions and along with each city a certain amount of land surrounding the city was also to be given, so the Levites would have a place to raise their farm animals.
Understand these were NOT cities the Israelites would build from scratch.
Rather, after Israel had taken possession of the land, the cities would be handpicked from the many towns and small villages the Hebrew army would capture from the Canaanite tribes during battle.
In many cases, what was given to the Levites was just an area with a handful of buildings.
They were not walled cities or anything remotely resembling what we would consider to be a city in our day.
What’s interesting about this God-ordained instruction to Israel to set aside cities for the Levites is that it is one of the Torah instructions that was NEVER FULLY IMPLEMENTED.
That’s right.
To this day, all existing historical records we have access to indicate the Levites never actually received ALL 48 of the cities they were supposed to have received.
Notice, I said that these instructions were only “one of” the Torah instructions that were never fully carried out.
So what was the other one?
The other Torah instruction that has never been fully implemented to this day was the Jubilee Year.
Recall that the Jubilee Celebration was established to ensure that the original owner of a piece of land would in the fiftieth year always get back his real estate if he had lost it to debt or whatever.
Well, the records indicate that the implementation of the Jubilee Year per the Torah never occurred even once!
And concerning the cities to be given to the Levites, they may have been “assigned” certain towns and villages but in terms of the Levites really moving into these areas, well that was a different story.
Here’s the thing.
Not only was each Israelite tribe (based on its size) to provide cities to the Levities to live in, but each tribe was also responsible for consistently caring for those Levites who were living in the cities in their assigned areas.
And this is something that unfortunately more often than not just did not happen.
Incidentally, the Book of Joshua does identify some of these Levite cities by name, but only the big ones.
The ugly reality we have to face and this is so typical of fallen and greedy human nature when it comes to anything connected with money and wealth is that when it came time to actually implement these instructions of God, what probably happened more often than not is that the tribes gave the Levites burnt out villages (areas that were considered of little value to the tribe) that were barely fit for human habitation.
What happened as a result of this?
The Levites who were given exceptionally crappy areas simply didn’t move in and instead chose to join their brothers in the more substantial and well-fortified cities that were walled.
And again, let’s not forget the situation of the Promised Land when the Israelites first entered into it.
Once Israel set foot inside the Promised Land, they would be forced to deal with a never-ending series of attacks from the Canaanites, wandering bandits and even armies sent by kings who wanted to expand their territorial holdings.
These hostile entities didn’t make any distinction between the common Israelites, the Levites and the Priesthood.
As far as they were concerned, an Israelite was an Israelite.
They were all fair game for the edges of their swords.
One takeaway I want you to get from today’s post is to witness the dynamic tension we can see existing between God’s instructions and how things actually played out on earth.
God gave His instructions concerning the Jubilee Year, but it never happened.
God gave His instructions concerning the cities to be given to the Levites, and it never fully happened.
God gave His Instructions concerning the boundaries of Canaan Israel was supposed to take over, and it has never yet fully happened (For starters Israel would have to conquer both Lebanon and Syria to begin fulfilling this aspect of the Torah).
And I’m pretty sure we can see this gap with many of the other Torah commands as well.
Not only is there a gap between God’s Commands and how things played out in Israel’s history, but there’s a gap (in my case a huge gap) between God’s Commands and how things play out in our daily lives as believers committed to obeying God’s Word.
Heck, there are even institutions out there who claim to follow the Jewish Messiah in one breath but in another breath say the whole Torah has been done away with.
To be fair, in some cases, there are literally some things we can do nothing about when it comes to obeying certain commands.
For instance, Israel not having a Temple at the moment makes it impossible to obey certain commands.
Yet, we are to strive to obey as much as we can and pray as the Messiah taught us to pray that…
“Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Will Be Done
On Earth,
As It Is In Heaven“
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