Two Ways to Live without an Inheritance
Interpreting Paul’s numerical ‘mistake’ in 1 Corinthians 10:8, with a coda on reading like a child.
Why did Paul get wrong the number of plague victims?
Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.’ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Cor 10:6-13)
Paul refers here to a few very recognisable events from the wilderness wanderings of Israel prior to entering the promised land. He goes out of his way to mention that not only did they occur as an example, but were written down precisely to provide instruction. He seems to be encouraging the Corinthians: have these things read, and do so in light of your own pivotal moment in between the great rescue of God and entering into his promised inheritance. The difficulty is that, when one does go back and read, one encounters quite a glaring mistake. Not a very problematic one, but a very obvious one: it was not twenty-three thousand Israelites who died outside the land after indulging in sexual immorality, but twenty-four thousand. Why did Paul get this figure wrong?
A sincere error?
One possible solution is that Paul made a simple mistake. He likely didn’t have the text of Numbers open while writing, and he simply misremembered and thus misquoted the number. Maybe it is a rounding error.
The trouble with this solution is that it is a very odd kind of mistake. 24,000 is actually a rather memorable number, for it is two twelves, the number of the tribes of Israel, by a thousand. It would make much more sense to me if the mistake had gone the other direction: the number who died was recorded in Numbers as 23,000, but Paul rounded it up to 24,000 as a tidier expression of the same fact. But instead, Paul inexplicably drops a thousand off a highly symbolic number. It thus seems unlikely to me that this was a mistake of memory.
The other possibility is a textual transmission problem. This is not at all my area of expertise and I confess that I have not looked into it, except to check that the figure from Numbers 25 is also given as 24,000 in the Septuagint. There may well be a solution to be found in the manuscripts. And in all probability I would have assumed this were the case and let a sleeping dog lie, if I had not flicked ahead a chapter or so from the relevant scene in Numbers and noticed another group of 23,000.
The count of the Levites
After the plague, the Lord instructs Moses and Eleazar the priest to take a census of all the fighting men of Israel, twenty years and older. The numbers are given by their tribes, in order that the land they are coming in to possess may be divided fairly between them, followed by the total count of the whole camp. The Levites are not included in this count because they will not receive a portion of the land, but they are nonetheless listed by their clans and counted, though in a different manner:
And those listed were 23,000, every male from a month old and upward. For they were not listed among the people of Israel, because there was no inheritance given to them among the people of Israel. (Num 26:62)
There it is: a figure of 23,000 which is counted, we are expressly told in Num 26:1, after the plague which took its 24,000 victims has ended. It is the number of all males born to the tribe of Levi. Coincidence? Or a connection we are supposed to notice?
That there may be no wrath
Let us recall the origins of the Levites’ distinctness from all the other tribes of Israel. It begins with the terrible incident of the golden calf, when ‘the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play’ (Ex 32:6, 1 Cor 10:7). The sons of Levi come to Moses’ aid in bringing judgement on Israel, killing about three thousand of the guilty by the sword. In response, Moses announces that, ‘today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing on you this day’. From the beginning, Levitical service is connected to the abatement of God’s wrath. The opening of the book of Numbers, which gives the first census of Israel and dictates how they are to be arranged in the camp around the tabernacle, positions the Levites immediately surrounding it for this very purpose:
But the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, so that there may be no wrath on the congregation of Israel. And the Levites shall keep guard over the tabernacle of the testimony. (Num 1:53)
In place of all firstborn
The book of Numbers then continues the story of how the Levites come to be set apart from the rest of Israel:
And the Lord said to Moses, ‘List all the firstborn males of the people of Israel, from a month old and upward, taking the number of their names. And you shall take the Levites for me—I am the Lord—instead of all the firstborn among the people of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the cattle of the people of Israel. (Num 4:40-41)
The concern here with all firstborn, people and livestock, should remind us of the Passover, when God indeed made known to Israel and to Egypt that ‘I am the Lord’. There, God spared the firstborn of Israel in not allowing ‘the destroyer’ to cross the threshold of their houses. At that time the Lord also established that all that were first to open the womb were to be consecrated to him (Ex 13:1-2). Here in Numbers, we see the Levites now being counted and substituted in for the firstborn of Israel.
That there may be no plague
After the tabernacle is consecrated (Num 7), the Lord instructs Moses on the consecration of the Levites to his service. It is explained again how the Lord has taken the Levites for himself in place of all the firstborn, and further added that their service at the tent of meeting is required ‘that there may be no plague among the people of Israel when the people of Israel come near the sanctuary’ (Num 8:19).
We now have the Levites being connected not only with the original prevention of plague during the Passover, but with the prevention of all future such plagues. In this context we can better understood Phinehas’ act in Num 25:7-8, which ended the plague that killed the 24,000, as an act fitting with his Levitical role. He steps forward to act as the most levitical of Levites — and consequently his line inherits the ‘perpetual priesthood’ (25:13).
Without an inheritance
A feature of the Levites’ consecration to God is that they do not have their own allotment of land alongside the other tribes. They are, as Numbers 26:62 explains, a tribe without an inheritance. In this respect, there is a kind of ironic parallel between the Levites and those Israelites who fail to inherit the land due to their sin. The Levites are dedicated for the purpose of maintaining the purity of Israel, as is proper to a people in whose midst the Lord himself dwells, while the dying-out of the wilderness generation and the plague victims likewise effects a purification of Israel. Both groups, in distinct ways, do not inherit in the land.
As we have already noted, the census in Numbers follows immediately after the plague. The 24,000 who died thus do not make it into the count, and nor, we are told, do the Levites. They are listed separately, making up a number so close to the number of those who died that it is like they stand as a substitute. And this, as we have seen, is what the Levites were: a substitutionary dedication to God in place of the firstborn of Israel he spared during the Passover, and in perpetual preservation of the whole of Israel, whom God has taken as his firstborn son.
Levitical themes in First Corinthians
Taking all these points together, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the Levites are very important to the events which Paul draws on 1 Cor 10. But this doesn’t quite get us to an answer for why he swaps out the number of plague victims for the number of surviving Levites in his summary of events to the Corinthians — that requires a closer look at Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians.
In the passages surrounding the above quoted section of 1 Corinthians, Paul frequently calls his readers’ attention to himself. He calls attention to the giving away of his rights for the sake of his preaching (1 Cor 9:1-18). He calls attention to the discipline he uses on himself, that he may not be disqualified from the race and from attaining the prize (1 Cor 9:24-27). And he calls the church’s attention to how he himself is labouring not for his own inheritance, but that they may receive theirs:
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. (1 Cor 10:31 - 11:1)
In all these ways, Paul positions himself with respect to the church as a Levite in service to greater Israel. The ‘rights’ he refers to are analogous to the Levitical rights of receiving material support from Israel for their service. And from all his warnings to the Corinthian church, it is clear that he sees them as being in the same position as Israel in the wilderness: on the verge of receiving their inheritance from the Lord, they are yet in danger of forfeiting it entirely.
Indeed, the parallel between what the Corinthians are tolerating, and the what the Israelites do in the wilderness of Moab, is striking. The judgement on the 24,000 came in response to their sexual immorality with the Moabites, by which they yoked themselves not only to Moab’s daughters, but also to Moab’s idols. The Corinthians are guilty of admitting to their feasts a man who is sexually immoral — indeed, his immorality is of an incestuous kind, which might remind us of the origin of the Moabites. The Corinthians are at risk of joining the table of the Lord to the table of demons (1 Cor 10:21). For this reason and others, Paul explains, ‘many of you are weak and ill, and some have died’ (1 Cor 11:30). They are suffering under a plague-like judgement, and the fitting response is for them to have the zeal of Levites and ‘purge the evil person from among you’ (1 Cor 5:13).
Though the end of the race is in sight, the Corinthians have not yet come into their inheritance, and because of this they are beset by the same temptations that Israel faced in the wilderness. But there are two ways to live without an inheritance in the land: the way of those who died in the wilderness under judgement, or the levitical way of living in hope of a future inheritance. The 24,000/23,000 represent these two alternatives.
Corinthians, which will it be? Will you be those who, with zeal for the holiness of God’s sanctuary, cast out the idolator, adulterer, the greedy and the grumbler from your midst and end the plague that is afflicting you? Will you offer yourselves up to God like firstborn sons who do the Father’s will? Will you imitate Paul, who is the Levite-figure par excellence (we could by turns see him as a Moses or a Phinehas) who is not concerned with his own inheritance, but with the ‘many’ he labours for, that they might attain the prize? Will you await your inheritance as a holy people purified unto God’s service?
Or, will you instead suffer the purification of a complete judgement? Will you yield to temptation and be destroyed?
The period of waiting the Corinthians were experiencing was one of great testing. The dangers were extreme. But the temptations were not too great for the grace they had received, as Paul wrote: ‘you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (1 Cor 1:7-8)
Coda: Why isn’t the simpler explanation to be preferred?
For all these arguments, it might still seem more believable to you that either Paul made an innocent and meaningless rounding adjustment or that someone else in the chain of manuscript transmission simply got things mixed up. I can’t disprove either of these possibilities. Even if I had all the available manuscript evidence at my fingertips, there would still be room to posit this theory because our knowledge of transmission is unlikely to be complete.
But let me put it to you that if there is an alternative explanation that fits with the themes of both passages — in Numbers and 1 Corinthians — this is the better explanation, however outlandish it might seem. Aristotle said that in
the poetic arts, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible. An occurrence that is believable within the world of the story, however apparently impossible, is superior to one that is ordinarily possible but requires improbable coincidences. A non-meaningful exchanging of the two figures is just such an improbable coincidence, it seems to me. We must not underestimate God’s master artistry. He will always choose the better story.
That said, it could still be the case that Paul himself got the figures jumbled, and didn’t precisely intend all the implications that I have drawn out. I am somewhat ambivalent about his conscious intentions and don’t actually consider this a counter argument. Indeed, one of the ways that good literature works is through a kind of confusion of ideas.
The realisation that Scripture in particular works this way came to me as an epiphany some years ago, courtesy of a young girl in my Sunday School class with an intellectual disability. Sean and I were teaching through Joshua and were doing a review at the start of one class of where the Israelites had travelled so far in the book. We were trying to jog the children’s memories about a body of water the Israelites had crossed to enter the land (the river Jordan), when this little girl shouted out very excitedly, ‘the Red Sea!’. It took us a moment to work out how to respond to her because while she was factually incorrect (they hadn’t crossed the Red Sea in the book of Joshua), she had made a mistake she was absolutely supposed to make. Hearing that Israel had crossed over water before entering the land, we are invited by the text to recall the Red Sea crossing. So in the end, we congratulated this girl on her observation that yes crossing the Jordan is like crossing the Red Sea—an observation as unintentional as it was profound.
Perhaps we would be better readers of Scripture if we read it more like little children?