Numbers 25

v1-5: Some of the men of Israel “were enticed by the women of Moab and Midian” into “both physical and spiritual adultery.” It often “the smiling charms of the world,” rather than “its awful terrors” that present the greatest danger to our faith.

v6-15: Like Phinehas, “ministers should be zealous for God,” doing “more than others to support and advance the interests of God’s kingdom.”

v16-18: We should see whatever that draws us to sin as our enemy, as doing the Devil’s work, and set ourselves against it, with holy indignation.

Numbers 26

v1-4: God will rebuke and discipline His people when they sin and go astray, but He will not destroy them. By commanding Moses to number the people of Israel, God made it clear that He was “not finished with them completely and did not intend to reject them totally.”

v5-51: “All the three tribes camped under the standard of Judah, who was the ancestor of Christ, had increased, for his church will be built up and multiplied.”

v52-56: A detailed record was “kept of the tribes, clans, and numbers of the people of Israel,” because the land will be allotted to them according to their number. Those with many people will be given more land, and those with few people will be given less. “God wants the fulfilment of the promise” He made to Abraham, noted both in Israel’s “increase in numbers and in their inheritance of land.”

v57-65: The sentence executed on “those who grumbled, that none of those who were numbered from twenty years old and upwards… would enter Canaan, except Caleb and Joshua” was executed. “No one who was counted now,” was counted in the first census, “except Caleb and Joshua.” We see that “those whom God has condemned will find no escape,” but also the goodness of God in raising up another generation, as numerous as the one before, “so that the inheritance of the promise would not be lost for lack of heirs.” For this generation, the time wandering in the desert gave them “the opportunity of coming to know the laws and ordinances of God” with “no civil or military business to distract them.”