Numbers 26:2

Take the sum of all the congregation.

Divine enumeration

God is a God of numbers. He is always numbering. He may number to find out who are present, but in numbering to find out who are present He soon comes to know who are absent. He knows the total number, but it is not enough for Him to know the totality; He must know whether David’s place is empty, whether the younger son has gone from the father’s house, whether one piece of silver out of ten has been lost, whether one sheep out of a hundred has gone astray. We are all of consequence to the Father, because He does not look upon us through the glory of His majesty, but through the solicitude of His fatherhood and His love. We need this kind of thought in human life: living would be weary work without it. This chapter reads very much like the other chapter in which the census was first taken. .. The historic names are the same, but what a going-down in the detail! We must enter into this thought and follow its applications if we would be wise in history; generic names are permanent, but the detail of life is a panorama continually changing. It is so always and everywhere. The world has its great generic and permanent names, and it is not enough to know these and to recite them with thoughtless fluency. Who could not take the statistics of the world in general names? Then we should have the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor, the faithful and the faithless, the good and the bad. That has been the record of life from the beginning; and yet that is too broadly-lined to be of any real service to us in the estimate of human prayers and human moral quality. What about the detailed numbers, the individual men, the particular households, the children in the crowd? It was in these under-lines that the great changes took place. The bold, leading names remained the same, but they stood up like monumental stones over graves in which thousands of men had been buried. So with regard to our own actions; we speak of them too frequently with generic vagueness; we are wanting in the persistent criticism that will never allow two threads of life to be intertangled, that must have them separated and specifically examined. God will have no roughness of judgment, no bold vagueness, no mere striking of averages; but heart-searching, weighing--not the action: any manufactured scales might weigh a deed. He will have the motive weighed, the invisible force, the subtle, ghostly movement that stirs the soul; not to be found out by human wisdom, but to be seized, detected, examined, estimated, and determined by the living Spirit of the living God. The sin of the individual does not destroy the election of the race. Israel is still here, but almost countless thousands of Israelites have sinned and gone to their doom. With all this individual criticism and specific numbering, do not imagine that it lies within the power of any man to stop the purpose or arrest the kingdom of God. There is a consolatory view of all human tumult and change, as well as a view that tries the faith and exhausts the patience of the saint. It is pitiful for any Christian man to talk about individual instances of lapse or faithlessness, as though they touched the infinite calm of the mind of God, and the infinite integrity of the covenant of Heaven. It is so in all other departments of life--why not so on the largest and noblest scale? The nation may be an honest nation, though a thousand felons may be under lock and key at the very moment when the declaration of the national honesty is made; the nation may be declared to be a healthy country, though ten thousand men be burning with fever at the very moment the declaration of health is made. So the Church of the living Christ, redeemed at an infinite cost, sealed by an infinite love, is still the Lamb’s bride, destined for the heavenly city, though in many instances there may be defalcation, apostasy--yea, very treason against truth and good. Live in the larger thought; do not allow the mind to be distressed by individual instances. The kingdom is one, and, like the seamless robe, must be taken in its unity. Individuals must not trust to ancestral piety. Individual Israelites might have quoted the piety of many who had gone before; but that piety goes for nothing when the individual will is in rebellion against God. No man has any overplus of piety. No man may bequeath his piety to his posterity. A man cannot bequeath his learning-how can he bequeath his holiness? (J. Parker, D. D.)

The apparent insignificance and the real importance of human life

These uninteresting verses suggest--

I. The apparent insignificance of human life. How dull are the details, and how wearisome the repetitions of this chapter! What a number of obscure names of unknown persons it contains!

II. The real importance of human life. This will appear if we consider that--

1. Every man has his own individuality of being and circumstances.

2. Every man has his own possibilities.

3. Every man has his own influence.

4. Every man has his own accountability.

5. Every man is an object of deep interest to God.

To Him nothing is mean, nothing unimportant. (W. Jones.)

The interesting hidden in the commonplace

I. Here is the commonplace.

II. Here is the interesting in the commonplace. If we look into this chapter carefully we shall discover certain words which are suggestive of deep and tender interests. “Sons” is a word of frequent occurrence so also is the word “children”; we also read of “daughters” (Numbers 26:33), and of a “daughter” (Numbers 26:46). A profound human interest attaches to words like these. They imply other words of an interest equally deep and sacred; e.g., “father,” “mother.” The humblest, dullest, most commonplace life has its relations. The least regarded person in all the thousands of Israel was “Homebody’s bairn.” We also read of “death” (Numbers 26:19); most of the names which are here recorded belonged to men who, were gathered to their fathers; from the time of the twelve sons of Jacob here mentioned to the time of this census in the plains of Moab, many thousands of Israelites had died, of all ranks and of all ages. Reflection upon these facts awakens a mournful interest in the mind.

III. The importance of the commonplace. Impatience of the ordinary and the prosaic is an evidence of an unsound judgment and an unhealthy moral life.

1. Most of life’s duties are commonplace. Yet how important it is that these duties he faithfully fulfilled!

2. The greater number of persons are commonplace.

3. The greater part of life is commonplace. Be it ours to give the charm of poetry to prosaic duties, by doing them heartily; and to ennoble our commonplace lives by living them faithfully and holily. (W. Jones.)