Numbers 8 · a question people ask
How do you wave a whole tribe as an offering?
The chapter doesn't say how it was done. It says only that it was done: "Aaron offered them for a wave offering before the LORD" (8:21). Numbers 3 had counted the Levite males from a month old and upward: "twenty-two thousand" (Numbers 3:39). What the chapter does say is what the waving was for: "that it may be theirs to do the service of the LORD" (8:11). And it says where they went next: "I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons" (8:19). Many wave offerings went the same way. Of the waved breast of a peace offering the LORD says, "I have taken from the children of Israel… and have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons" (Leviticus 7:34).
The verses
“and Aaron shall offer the Levites before the LORD for a wave offering on the behalf of the children of Israel, that it may be theirs to do the service of the LORD.”
“I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons from among the children of Israel, to do the service of the children of Israel in the Tent of Meeting, and to make atonement for the children of Israel, so that there will be no plague among the children of Israel when the children of Israel come near to the sanctuary.””
“The Levites purified themselves from sin, and they washed their clothes; and Aaron offered them for a wave offering before the LORD and Aaron made atonement for them to cleanse them.”
“All who were counted of the Levites, whom Moses and Aaron counted at the commandment of the LORD, by their families, all the males from a month old and upward, were twenty-two thousand.”