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Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

“Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah” is one of the best-known hymns in the world. Yet the book of Numbers, whose story that hymn summarizes, is seldom read. Why? “Its very title puts the modern reader off,” writes Gordon Wenham. “In ancient time numbers were seen as mysterious and symbolic, a key to reality and the mind of God himself. Today they are associated with computers and the...

spirit of the LORD is distributed to the seventy elders (25, 29) and a wind from the LORD (31) (rûaḥ in Hebrew means both spirit and wind) brings swarms of quails for the people to eat. Thus the story emphasizes from beginning to end the interrelatedness of the popular demand for meat and Moses’ prayer for spiritual support. Yet the outcome of the requests was very different. The spirit was bestowed within the court of the tabernacle, in the clean and holy area; the quails fell outside the camp,
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