Remembering Their Inheritance

"From the whole community of Israel, record the names of all the warriors by their families. List all the men twenty years old or older who are able to go to war." (Numbers 1:20-43, 46; 26:2-51)

It may seem strange at first to see that the Israelites counted the number of people twice, once in Numbers Chapter 1 and once in Chapter 26.  It makes more sense, though, when we realize that Chapter 26 is 40 years after Chapter 1.  Only Joshua and Caleb were alive and counted in both lists.  Other than that, not a single person counted the first time was alive to be counted the second time.  God’s promise had come true.

Tribe (or 1/2 Tribe)	Before	After
Reuben	46,500	43,730
Simeon	59,300	22,200
Gad	45,650	40,500
Judah	74,600	76,500
Issachar	54,400	64,300
Zebulun	57,400	60,500
Ephriam (Joseph)	40,500	32,500
Manasseh (Joseph)	32,200	52,700
Benjamin	35,400	45,600
Dan	62,700	64,400
Asher	41,500	53,400
Naphtali	53,400	45,400
Total	603,550	601,730

Not only had God fulfilled God’s promise to make the people as numerous as the stars in the sky. (There were millions of Israelites at this point.)  God had also sustained them at these numbers while they spent 40 years in the wilderness.  This fulfilling and re-fulfilling of the promises helped build their faith in another promise God had made: they would inherit the land.

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Divide the land among the tribes, and distribute the grants of land in proportion to the tribes' populations, as indicated by the number of names on the list. Give the larger tribes more land and the smaller tribes less land, each group receiving a grant in proportion to the size of its population. But you must assign the land by lot, and give land to each ancestral tribe according to the number of names on the list. Each grant of land must be assigned by lot among the larger and smaller tribal groups." (Numbers 26:52-56 NLT)

So how about you?  Does God’s faithfulness in your past build your faith in God about the future? How?