Numbers 2:24, commentary and pictures

The numbering of the camp of Ephraim was one hundred thousand and eight thousand and one hundred throughout its armies, and it was appointed to go forward in the third rank. That detail belongs to a perfect and special organization instituted for Israel in the wilderness for encamping and traveling, in which each camp was numbered throughout its armies and assigned its definite place and rank to go forward. It formed a disciplined, coordinated and orderly journey without confusion, each tribe marching under its own standard in its appointed place as part of a disciplined and coordinated community.

In that order every tribe carried a standard marked with the sign of its father's house and was commanded to pitch by its own standard and to march under its own standard. When at rest the tabernacle was erected and the tribes pitched their tents in order around it at a distance in exactly the position commanded. Rest and travel were directed by the pillar of cloud, which rested low directly over the tabernacle when the people should pitch and abide and lifted high above the tabernacle when they should journey again. The tabernacle itself was constructed to be taken to pieces and carried with them, and the ark of the covenant was carried before the people when they journeyed.

The arrangement was given for the benefit of Israel to impress the people with divine majesty and holiness and with the purity required of those who serve. It assigned each person a specific work to be done faithfully, giving the work of the nation an orderly, harmonious and elevated character. That order was intended to show the surrounding nations that the Lord governed Israel, revealing something of His character and of what He desires His people to be.

Together with the history of deliverance, murmuring, transgressions, rebellions, punishments, and carcasses strewn in the wilderness for unwillingness to submit to wise arrangements, this order is held up before those upon whom the ends of the world are come as an example and admonition and warning not to follow that disobedience and fall. God has not changed from being a God of order but is the same in the present dispensation as in the former, not the author of confusion but of peace and as particular now as then. He intends that lessons of order and organization be learned from the perfect order instituted in the days of Moses, so His instructions to ancient Israel should inform present plans and arrangements while personal peculiarities and narrow schemes that misrepresent the work are avoided.