Numbers, Shavuot, and Lifting Up Your Head

Shavuot/ Parashat Bamidbar, Numbers 1:1-4:20

Rabbi Joshua Brumbach, Simchat Yisrael, West Haven, CT

The Book of Numbers begins with God telling Moses to take a census of the entire assembly of Israel. This census is where the book of Numbers gets its English name.

 Take a census of the entire assembly of Israel according to their families. (Numbers 1:2)

 This census seems to appear out of nowhere. Right at the very beginning of Numbers, God commands this census to be taken. Which leads us to ask, what is the purpose of this census anyway?

The Hebrew of the text helps provide an answer, as the phrase se’u et rosh (שְׂאוּ אֶת-רֹאשׁ), which we usually translate as “take a census,” is more literally “lift up the head.” The Hebrew paints a more nuanced picture than that of a person with a clipboard simply going around and counting people. Instead, the more literal reading, “lift up the head,” implies a selection involving dignity and respect. According to Hasidic thought, the purpose of the census was to reach out to the core of the Jewish soul, because when each person is counted, everyone is equal. Each person counts as only one count. No one is counted twice, and no one is skipped. The census evens the playing field and shows the equality and value of every single individual.

Following the census of the people in chapter one of Numbers, the Torah then turns its attention in chapter two to how the Israelites were to set up camp around the Tabernacle. The 13th century Jewish sage, Ramban (Nachmanides), noticed clear parallels between the specific commandments regarding the Tabernacle and the Revelation at Sinai. According to Ramban, as Sinai represented the place of God’s manifest presence, so too the Tabernacle represented God’s presence on earth. And just as the people camped around the base of Mt. Sinai, so too did the tribes camp around the Tabernacle, symbolizing the centrality of God’s presence among the people of Israel. Therefore, by making the Tabernacle central to the people of Israel, geographically and conceptually, it also solidified the Jewish commitment to the centrality of Torah. 

This coming Saturday evening marks the beginning of Shavuot, also known as Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks. It is the holiday when we celebrate the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. According to Abraham Joshua Heschel, something extraordinary took place there between God, Moses, and the Jewish people:

What we see may be an illusion; that we see can never be questioned. The thunder and lightning at Sinai may have been merely an impression; but to have suddenly been endowed with the power of seeing the whole world struck with an overwhelming awe of God was a new sort of perception. . . . Only in moments when we are able to share in the spirit of awe that fills the world are we able to understand what happened to Israel at Sinai. (God in Search of Man, 195–197)

Every year on Shavuot we seek to re-experience a taste of the awesomeness of what happened at Sinai. And as a Messianic Jewish community, we also celebrate the incarnation and indwelling of the Living Torah, Yeshua our Messiah, and the affirmation of his incarnation, resurrection, and ascension through the outpouring of God’s Spirit as described in Acts 2.

After all, Shavuot is the important context for understanding Acts 2 when the Spirit was poured out upon those early Jewish believers in fulfillment of God’s promise of restoration (Jeremiah 31, etc.). Furthermore, this outpouring of the Spirit was so they could go out and do. This infilling was not just for their own spiritual edification, but to empower them to do the work of the Kingdom.

Although one of the roles of the Spirit is to serve as a “comforter” (John 14:16–17, 26) the Spirit also empowers and enables us to observe his covenant (see especially Ezekiel 36:26-27). Furthermore, the Spirit also prepares us for our divine mission, because, as believers in Yeshua, our role must be to help implement God’s kingdom of justice now: through our life, through our deeds, and to all those around us. We must be about the work of preparing the way for our Redeemer.

Shavuot is not just when the Jewish people received our calling and instructions for how to live as Jews, Sinai was also a moment of dignity, when God took us, an enslaved and defeated people, and lifted our heads and spoke purpose into us. And God, through the gift of his Spirit, can do the same for everyone today who seeks him.

The census at the beginning of the book of Numbers and the giving of the Torah on Shavuot both have important lessons for us today. They both were about providing direction and purpose. May you also experience renewed dignity and purpose this Shavuot. May the Lord raise up your head, impart dignity and purpose to you, and pour out his Spirit upon you in a fresh and powerful way.

 Chag Sameach … have a wonderful Shavuot!