Numbers 26:50, commentary and pictures

This verse belongs to Israel's second numbering in Numbers 26, taken by Moses at God's command in the plains of Moab near entry into Canaan at the end of the forty years of wandering, thirty-eight years after the first census at Sinai in Numbers 1, after every man counted in the first numbering had fallen in the wilderness except Caleb and Joshua. It records the families of Naphtali according to their families and their numbered total of forty-five thousand four hundred men in that census taken near entry into Canaan at the close of the forty years.

The second census is to be compared with the first census taken forty years earlier to note the differences among the tribes and see how they gained or lost population during the wilderness journey, showing how some tribes fell off and others increased. By that comparison Naphtali had fallen by eight thousand, illustrating the wider pattern in which some tribes increased greatly while others fell off and declined. Numbering Israel in this way was not sinful in itself, for these censuses were taken by Moses at God's command; David's wrong was taking a census without the Lord's consent and trusting in the people's strength.

The reckoning stands as proof that God fulfills His threatened judgments, with not one of the rebels remaining alive. That failure came because the people were wicked with sin in their midst breaking out in open, wanton rebellion against God, so that by solemn oath He excluded them from the land of promise and doomed them to die in the wilderness. The verse warns those on whom the ends of the world are come, whose hopes of entering the kingdom of God and whose tokens of His favor, presence, and willingness to save are no weaker than Israel's at the first numbering, that sin carried in the heart inevitably brings ruin and will cause them to come short as Israel did.