1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2“Count the heads of the Kohathites from the midst of the Levites by their clans, by their fathers’ houses. 3From thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who come to the army to do the task in the Tent of Meeting. 4This is the work of the Kohathites in the Tent of Meeting, the holy of holies. 5And Aaron shall come, and his sons, when the camp journeys onward, and take down the covering of the screen and cover with it the Ark of the Covenant. 6And they shall place over it a cover of ocher-dyed skin and spread a garment of pure indigo above it and put in its poles. 7And on the table of the Presence they shall spread an indigo garment and place on it the bowls and the ladles and the jars and the libation flasks, and the perpetual bread shall be upon it. 8And they shall spread over them a crimson garment and cover it in a covering of ocher-dyed skin and put in its poles. 9And they shall take an indigo garment and cover the lamp stand of the light and its lamps and its tongs and its fire-pans and all its oil vessels with which they serve. 10And they shall place it and all its vessels in a covering of ocher-dyed skin and place it on a beam. 11And over the golden altar they shall spread an indigo garment and cover it with a covering of ocher-dyed skin and put in its poles. 12And they shall take all the vessels of service with which they serve in the sanctuary and place them in an indigo garment and cover them with a covering of ocher-dyed skin and place on a beam. 13And they shall clear the ashes from the altar and spread over it a purple garment. 14And they shall place on it all its vessels with which they serve upon it, the fire-pans and the flesh-hooks and the scrapers and the basins, all the vessels of the altar, and they shall spread over it a covering of ocher-dyed skin and put in its poles. 15And Aaron, and his sons, shall finish covering the sanctuary and all the vessels of the sanctuary when the camp journeys onward, and afterward the Kohathites shall come to carry, so that they do not touch the holy and die. These make up the carriage of the Kohathites in the Tent of Meeting. 16And what is appointed for Eleazar son of Aaron the priest—the oil for the lamp and the aromatic incense and the perpetual grain offering and the anointing oil, what is appointed for all the Tabernacle and all that is in it, in the sanctuary and in its vessels.”
17And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 18“Do not let the tribe of the clans of the Kohathites be cut off from the midst of the Levites. 19And this shall you do for them, that they live and not die when they draw near the holy of holies: Aaron and his sons shall come and set every man of them at his work and at his carriage. 20And they shall not come in to see the sanctuary for even a moment and die.”
21And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 22“Count the heads of the Gershonites, too, by their fathers’ houses, by their clans. 23From thirty years old up till fifty years old you shall reckon them, all who do army service to do the work in the Tent of Meeting. 24This is the work of the Gershonite clans, for work and for carriage: 25They shall carry the curtains of the Tabernacle and the Tent of Meeting, its covering and the covering of ocher-dyed skin that is over it above and the screen of the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 26And the panels of the court and the screen for the entrance to the gate of the court which is all around the Tabernacle and the altar, and their cords, and all the vessels for their service and all that is done for them, and they shall do the work. 27By the word of Aaron and his sons shall be all the work of the Gershonites, for all their carriage and for all their work, and you shall oversee them watchfully in all their carriage. 28This is the work of the Gershonite clans in the Tent of Meeting, and their watch is in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest. 29The Merarites by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, you shall reckon them. 30From thirty years old up till fifty years old you shall reckon them, all who come to the army to do the work of the Tent of Meeting. 31And this is the watch of their carriage for all their work in the Tent of Meeting: the boards of the Tabernacle and its bars and its posts and its sockets, 32and the posts of the court all around and their sockets and their pegs and their cords, for all their vessels and for all their work. And by name you shall reckon the vessels of their carriage watch. 33This is the work of the Merarites for all their work in the Tent of Meeting, in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest.”
34And Moses, and Aaron and the chieftains of the community with him, reckoned the Kohathites by their clans by their fathers’ houses, 35from thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who came to the army, to the work in the Tent of Meeting. 36And their reckoning by their clans was two thousand seven hundred and fifty. 37This is the reckoning of the Kohathite clans, all who worked in the Tent of Meeting, which Moses, and Aaron with him, reckoned, by the LORD’s word, through the hand of Moses. 38And the reckoning of the Gershonites by their clans and by their fathers’ houses, 39from thirty years old up till fifty years, all who came to the army, to the work in the Tent of Meeting. 40And their reckoning by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, came to two thousand six hundred and thirty. 41This is the reckoning of the Gershonites, all who worked in the Tent of Meeting, which Moses, and Aaron with him, reckoned by the LORD’s word. 42And the reckoning of the Merarite clans, by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, 43from thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who came to the army, to the work in the Tent of Meeting. 44And their reckoning by their clans came to three thousand two hundred. 45This is the reckoning of the Merarite clans that Moses, and Aaron with him, reckoned by the LORD’s word, through the hand of Moses. 46All the reckoning by which Moses, and Aaron and the chieftains of Israel with him, reckoned the Levites by their clans and by their fathers’ houses, 47from thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who came to do the work and the work of carriage in the Tent of Meeting. 48And their reckoning came to eight thousand five hundred and eighty. 49By the LORD’s word did he reckon them through the hand of Moses, every man according to his work and according to his carriage, and his reckoning was as the LORD had charged Moses.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
3. From thirty years old up till fifty years old. The Book of Numbers incorporates three different traditions regarding the beginning age of levitical service. The notion of the present unit that it begins at thirty seems to reflect a sense that, in contradistinction to general military service, which begins at twenty, the maintenance of the sanctuary as it is transported requires elaborate training or perhaps something like spiritual maturity.
all who come to the army. Throughout this chapter, the Hebrew word for “army,” tzavaʾ, is a kind of pun. The term has a secondary meaning of “service,” which is the primary sense in this context, but its repeated use reminds us that the Levites’ cultic service is an equivalent to fulfilling military obligations.
5. take down the covering of the screen. In both anthropological and literary terms, the key to this entire passage is the idea of protective envelope, barrier, covering. Not only are these terms used repeatedly but a rich vocabulary of synonyms is deployed: mikhseh and kisui (both meaning “covering”), masakh (“screen”), and, for the sheets of brilliant cloth used to wrap the sacred objects, beged, “garment.” This last term may reflect an anthropomorphizing sense of solicitous concern for the sacralia, but, more pervasively, the extravagant emphasis on coverings (which may be more the literary articulation of a theological idea than a record of the historical experience of early Israel) is driven by a widespread ancient Near Eastern notion of the terrific danger of the holy for all but the consecrated priests. Thus the transportation of the sanctuary from place to place, its disassembling and reassembling, was a moment of acute peril, for which our passage makes elaborate provision. Note how God exhorts Moses and Aaron (verse 18) to protect the Kohathites from being “cut off”—here, evidently, struck dead—by making sure not only that they avoid direct contact with the sacred objects but also that they not look at the sacred. This, too, is a taboo registered in other ancient Near Eastern texts. Only the consecrated Aaronite priests, not the Levites, may touch or behold the sacred objects.
7. the table of the Presence. This is a common ellipsis for the “table of the Bread of the Presence,” that is the table on which the twelve loaves of “perpetual bread” (changed weekly by the officiants of the sanctuary) were placed.
19. at his work and at his carriage. These paired terms are repeated through the passage. Though some scholars have proposed that they are a hendiadys—two terms bound together to indicate one concept—it is more plausible to see them as the two complementary labors of the Levites: ‘avodah, “work,” would be taking apart the sanctuary and perhaps also reassembling it; masaʾ, “carriage,” is the task of carrying it from place to place. It is misleading to render ʿavodah as “service” because hard physical labor is entailed, and only in later Hebrew does that noun come to mean the temple service.
20. even a moment. The Hebrew kevala‘ (the verbal root means “to swallow” or “to destroy”) is obscure. The translation follows a proposal of Baruch Levine, who compares the word with its occurrence in Job 7:19, but it should be said that in Job the verb, as an indication of a very brief moment, has a specific object: “You don’t let me go [even] while I swallow my spit.” One would have to assume, then, that kevalaʿ here is an ellipsis for an established idiom invoked more fully in Job, though there are scant grounds for confidence in that assumption. Others construe it as “dismantling,” but that seems a long stretch from the basic meaning of “swallow” or “destroy.”