Numbers 26 Bible study: Not a man left

The chapter opens, "After the plague, the LORD spoke to Moses and to Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest" (26:1). The plague was the one at Peor: "Those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand" (25:9). The first count had been "in the wilderness of Sinai" (1:1), with the words "You and Aaron shall count them" (1:3). Since then, on Mount Hor, "Aaron died there on the top of the mountain" (20:28), and his garments were put on "Eleazar his son" (20:28). So Eleazar stands beside Moses now, and the place has changed: "the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho" (26:3). The command is the same as before: "from twenty years old and upward, by their fathers’ houses, all who are able to go out to war in Israel" (26:2).

Numbers 26:53→leads toActs 13:30

The LORD tells Moses, "To these the land shall be divided for an inheritance according to the number of names" (26:53). It was done "by the lot of their inheritance, as the LORD commanded by Moses" (Joshua 14:2). In the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:14), Paul tells the story this chapter stands in: God led the fathers out of Egypt (Acts 13:17), "For a period of about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness" (Acts 13:18), and "he gave them their land for an inheritance" (Acts 13:19). He carries it on through the judges, Saul and David (Acts 13:20-22): "From this man’s offspring, God has brought salvation to Israel according to his promise" (Acts 13:23). He tells how "those who dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers" (Acts 13:27) asked Pilate to have him killed (Acts 13:28), and then: "But God raised him from the dead" (Acts 13:30). A few verses on he names him: "he raised up Jesus" (Acts 13:33). Paul doesn't quote Numbers 26, so how the land fits is a reading. Some read the land shared out here as one stage in the one story Paul tells, from the fathers to the one God raised (Acts 13:17-30). Others read Paul's words on the land as the history he begins from (Acts 13:17-22), and draw no line from this count, or the sharing out of the land, to Jesus.

נַחֲלָהnachalahsay na-kha-LAH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "possession, property, inheritance". Strong's: "something inherited". It comes six times in this chapter, from "To these the land shall be divided for an inheritance" (26:53) to the Levites, "because there was no inheritance given them among the children of Israel" (26:62). Numbers 18 gave the reason. The LORD told Aaron, "I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel" (Numbers 18:20), and of the Levites he said, "For the tithe of the children of Israel, which they offer as a wave offering to the LORD, I have given to the Levites for an inheritance" (Numbers 18:24). Numbers uses the word 46 times, and 39 of them come from this chapter to the end of the book, among them the inheritance of Zelophehad's daughters in the next chapter: "You shall cause the inheritance of their father to pass to them" (27:7).