This post is a continuance of my blogging through the Bible, the schedule for our yearly reading is found at our Bible Schedule page and all of my “Through the Bible” are found here.

Have continue to ask if there is a reason why the numbers are all multiples of ten, I suppose it could just be that all the numbers of the tribes were actually round numbers but it seems terribly unlikely. However none of the commentaries I have read include any concern for the matter so I suppose I will put it on a shelf until I read it again next year at which point I will ask the question again.
There are a few things you miss entirely if you don’t spend some time reading the passages of scripture like Numbers 2 where you see numbers and repetition. God planed the way the Israelites camped in the wilderness and if you were to draw it out it resembles a cross, with the tabernacle at the center. The north and the south sides are almost even with Dan, Asher and Naphtali on the north side with 157,600. The south side held Simeon, Reuben and Gad at 151, 450. The west side is a little shorter with 108,100 and the east side longer with 186,400. This is almost the perfect dimensions for a cross.   Hopefully the picture gives you some idea of what I mean, although it doesn’t show the differences in the numbers of members of each tribe that would make one ‘arm’ longer or shorter than the others.
Sometimes it isn’t what the Bible says that catches your attention but in this section of scripture it is a little more of what it doesn’t say. I have been intrigued by the Nazarite vow discussed in Numbers chapter 6 but what is interesting to me is that not much is said of it after word. The Hebrew word is nāzîr (Strong’s 5139) it is also translated as ‘separate’ when Israel is blessing his son Joseph in Gen 49:26. We know that Sampson was a Nazarite and it is assumed by many that John the Baptist was also a Nazarite. We have nothing like the Nazarite vow in the new covenant, no ‘super Christians’ although we all may reserve the right through our own relationships with the Lord to abstain from certain things and to devote ourselves to our God. I just find it interesting that not much else is said.

When I brought up the topic of the Nazarite vow at our home fellowship we started to work through the ideas and I suppose these types of vows have been replaced with a working relationship through the Holy Spirit. There are probably things each of us abstain from in the name of the Lord and those are our vows, they are personal to our relationship and do not translate to others relationship with God.