The Book of Numbers

Description

The book of Numbers tells a story that has two main characters – God and Israel. The way the story is told sounds odd and often harsh to readers today. But in spite of the difficulties imposed by Numbers on today’s readers, the main point of the book is of immense importance for God’s people in any age: exact obedience to God is crucial.

This comprehensive and erudite commentary on Numbers – resulting from nearly a decade of study by Timothy Ashley – presents a thorough explication of this significant Hebrew text. Ashley’s introduction to Numbers discusses such questions as structure, authorship, and theological themes, and it features and extended bibliography of major works on the book of Numbers, concentrating mainly on works in English, French, and German.

Dividing the text of Numbers into five major sections, Ashley’s commentary elucidates the theological themes of obedience and disobedience that run throughout the book’s narrative. His detailed verse-by-verse comments are indented primarily to explain the Hebrew text of Numbers as we have it rather than to speculate on how the book came to be in its present form.

Timothy R. Ashley is minister of First Baptist Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He previously served for more than twenty years as professor of biblical studies at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.