![]() ![]() In her recent book, Carmen Joy Imes describes liminality and how it relates to Israel’s experience of the wilderness.¹ She notes how a couple during their wedding ceremony (an hour or two), a women during pregnancy (nine months), and students during their university education (three or four years) all experience liminality-that in-between place, a place of formation, ultimately a place of becoming. ![]() The wilderness is what we might call a liminal space, and what Israel experiences in the wilderness is liminality. But it is also a place of formation, a place to encounter God and depend on him. The wilderness itself is a symbolic place-unable to sustain life, it is a profoundly challenging place for the multitude of Israelites. Between these two geographic and symbolic places sits “the wilderness,” where the whole of Numbers is set. Israel is journeying between two important places: Egypt, a place of debilitating and inhumane slavery, and Canaan, the Land of Promise that is “gushing with milk and honey,” a place of security, prosperity, and life. The concept of place and space in Numbers matters-not just geographically but also symbolically. This whole section is much more hopeful as complaints are absent, disputes are settled peacefully, and more instructions are received, giving hope for life in the Promised Land. NUMBERS 26-36: A second census is taken of the new generation (ch. God determines that this generation is doomed to die in the wilderness for their rebellious ways. Sinai, the Israelites begin to complain and grumble about their situation (11:1), and this section (interspersed with more divine instruction) includes many such complaint narratives, demonstrating Israel’s intensifying disbelief and rebellion. The people receive these instructions and follow them meticulously. 1), God establishes the order and structure of the camp and its leadership and gives instructions to Israel as they prepare to leave Sinai. NUMBERS 1-10: Starting with the first census (ch. The book’s structure is complicated, but for simplicity’s sake we can think of it like this: ![]() Numbers recounts the forty-plus years that Israel spent in the wilderness, marking the transition from the Sinai generation who had been liberated from Egypt and would ultimately perish in the wilderness to the subsequent generation who would journey from the wilderness to the Promised Land. Moreover, it offers pastors and other Christian leaders instruction for leading through and beyond the wilderness. Numbers should inspire us to consider another (warmer) metaphor: namely, wilderness. helpfully (and prophetically, it seems) inspired us to consider our COVID “moment” in terms of the metaphors of blizzard, winter, and ice-age (particularly resonant for a Canadian like me). Many months ago in an article titled “ Leading Beyond the Blizzard,” Andy Crouch and co. Numbers, of course, is a record of the people of God for the instruction of subsequent people of God, and if we attune our ears properly, we can hear it echo through the centuries to speak to us today. When COVID-19 brought our lives as we knew them to a screeching halt in March 2020, my current research project had me immersed in the book of Numbers-and I had a growing sense of how relevant its message was for the present situation. ![]()
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