Numbers, Book of

The Book of Numbers (Hebrew Bemidbar, in the wilderness; called Numbers in Greek and English translations for the two census lists it contains) is the fourth book of the Pentateuch, covering the thirty-eight years of Israel's wilderness wandering between Sinai and the plains of Moab. The book alternates between legislative material inherited from Sinai and narrative accounts of Israel's journey and failures. Its major episodes include the twelve spies and the resulting judgment of forty years in the wilderness (Numbers 13–14), Korah's rebellion (16), the bronze serpent (21), the oracles of Balaam (22–24), and the Phinehas incident (25).

Numbers is deeply concerned with the tension between God's faithfulness and Israel's repeated unbelief. The two censuses (chapters 1 and 26) bracket the wilderness generation: the first counts those who came out of Egypt, the second counts their children who will enter the land. Paul cites Numbers as a warning to the church: the failures of the wilderness generation — idolatry, sexual immorality, testing Christ, grumbling — are written for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10:6–11). Hebrews 3:7–4:11 uses the wilderness generation's unbelief as a sustained warning against apostasy, and John 3:14 connects the bronze serpent typologically to the lifting up of the Son of Man.