Image: Logjam on the St. Croix River, Minnesota.
As timber companies harvested America’s forests in the late 19th century, one of the easiest ways to get logs to the sawmills was to set them afloat in local rivers. But these tree-sized logs would snag on things and on each other, creating logjams. In fact, logjams were not unusual. But serious logjams could be miles long with timbers snarled in piles thirty feet above the water. Breaking up a logjam like that was extremely dangerous, as any timber that suddenly shifted or popped free could kill a man.
Have you noticed the systematic and detailed nature of the Bible?
Of course, there are heartfelt, soul-nourishing passages of creativity like the poetry and music of the book of Psalms and the other books of Wisdom Literature (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon). Esther, Ruth, the Gospels, and some of the epistles read like personal narratives or letters.
But other books of the Bible are as systematic and detailed as textbooks. Consider the detail of the genealogies, the architectural records of the tabernacle and the temple, the detail surrounding the exodus and the wilderness journeys, and the statutory law laid out in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Google’s “AI Overview” defines a DATASET as a “structured collection of related data points, such as numbers, text, or images, organized for analysis, processing, and machine learning.”[1]
When speaking of large cities and the those who populate them, the term dataset can be applied to people: people are a collection of related data points which must be organized for analysis.
When millions of people are involved, you must adopt a systematic and detailed approach or the flow of traffic will become a log jam. This is true of every aspect of cities both modern and ancient, from armies to infrastructure, from education to medicine, from farming to housing. And it is true of written records, both secular and Biblical.
When millions of people are involved everything must be done in a systematic and organized manner.
Imagine the administrative and organizational skills of Joseph, saving the grain of Egypt for seven years, then saving the known world from famine during the next seven. Or the operation Job was running in his later years with 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 2,000 oxen, and 2,000 donkeys.
What a gifted administrator was Moses? God led the man into the desert—with almost no food or water—with over a million bickering, homeless nomads.
The fourth book of the Hebrew Bible has a Hebrew name that means “IN THE WILDERNESS.” Thus, while discussing datasets and the millions involved in the Exodus journey, it is interesting to note that rather than translating from the Hebrew, publishers changed the name to “NUMBERS.”* This is a book in which the numbers play a significant role.
The second chapter of Numbers describes the way these people in the wilderness were to camp each night. The tabernacle would be set up in the center, and the tribe of Levi would camp in a circle around it, with Moses and Aaron on the east. Beyond the Levites would be a clockwise ring of tribes from Judah on the east to Zebulun, Simeon, Reuben, Gad, Manasseh, Ephraim at the western end, then Benjamin, Asher, Dan, Naphtali, and Issachar.
“All those that were numbered of the camps throughout their hosts were six hundred thousand, three thousand and five hundred and fifty [603,550]. But the Levites were not numbered among the children of Israel, as the Lord commanded Moses” Numbers 2:32-33.
“This must have been one of the largest campsites the world has ever seen! It would have taken about 12 square miles to set up tents for just 600,000 fighting men—not to mention the women and children [and the uncounted tribe of Levi for a total of well over a million people]. Moses must have had a difficult time managing such a group.”[2]
Not only would such a crowd be difficult to manage. Imagine providing them with food and water! The billion-dollar infrastructure project for which I work provides water to not half as many people—and we have been laying 8-foot-diameter pipe for nearly a decade!
Can you imagine this crowd waking up in the desert and hiking ten miles, pitching tents, and hoping to find water—for a million people? Of course, God was involved. God is the miracle-working logistical expert. He is the only one capable of feeding this horde, providing them with water and shelter and provision for their animals.
All the detailed logistical planning in the world could not do what God did for Israel.
But reading these detailed records? It is a slow read. We are not watching an action film here! Every paragraph is predictable: Name the next location for a flag, name the tribe to camp around that flag, name its captain, and number its soldiers—then move to the next flag, tribe, and census (and repeat 12 times).
There is a routine to this reading. It is systematic, more like reading government forms than an adventure in the wilderness.
But the purpose of the book of Numbers is not to entertain. The purpose is to provide a reliable, systematic record of an actual journey. And as soon as you master the facts, you can step back and comprehend what is really going on: God led a million people through a wasteland and sustained them for forty years with food and water. Even their clothes did not wear out! (Deuteronomy 29:5).
What a huge miracle!
Have you ever needed a huge miracle? Are you praying for something as big as 12 square miles, as populated as a million people, and as long-term as 40 years in the wilderness? God can do it! He does not get tired! His miracle-working power will never, ever grow weary, no matter how long it takes. HE CAN SUSTAIN YOU FOREVER!
Never let the “boring” nature of the Biblical record cause you to miss the incredible story of what God is doing!
AΩ.
* The name “Numbers” follows the Greek (and later Latin) tradition of the translators of the Septuagint, who chose the term ‘Numbers’ to reference the censuses taken in chapters 4 and 26.
[1] The A.I. Overview cobbles together answers to Google queries by culling relevant information from other websites. When asked, it will tell writers not to cite the AI Overview, but to cite the websites from which the overview created its answer. I reviewed those: one was a less-than-ideal definition from Merriam-Webster. The rest were tech articles about A.I., and not worth citing for a definition of dataset. In this odd case, it made more sense to cite Google’s AI Overview.
[2] Chronological Life Application Study Bible, King James Version, Tyndale House Publisher, Carol Stream (2004), p235, note on Num.2:34.
Household Words: 