Numbers 26:7

These are the families of the Reubenites: and they that were numbered of them were forty and three thousand and seven hundred and thirty.

This verse belongs to Israel's second census in Numbers 26, answering and corresponding to the first numbering at the opening of the book in Numbers 1-3. It was taken at the end and close of the forty years in the wilderness, about forty years after the first census soon after Israel left Egypt. It was taken in the plains of Moab, thirty-eight years after the census at Sinai. It records that the families of the Reubenites numbered 43,730.

It gives the definite number of men of a certain age in the families, following the same pattern as the numbering in Numbers 1-3. It was taken at the Lord's command, and unlike David's later census it brought no trouble. The number is to be compared with the first numbering in Numbers 1 to show and note how the tribes increased and decreased, gained and lost, and differed and changed during the wilderness journey. Compared with 46,500 Reubenites at the first census, the tribe had decreased by 2,770.

Between the two numberings every man numbered the first time had fallen and died in the wilderness except Caleb and Joshua. The cause was wickedness and sin breaking out in open, wanton rebellion against God, so that God by solemn oath excluded that generation from the land of promise and doomed them to die in the wilderness. The second numbering makes manifest that not one of the rebels remained alive and proves beyond dispute that God's threatened judgments were accomplished, showing that God had carried out his judgment and impressing that God will fulfill his threatened judgments.

It instructs those upon whom the ends of the world are come that hopes of entering the kingdom of God cannot be stronger than Israel's hopes at the first numbering, and tokens of God's favor, presence, and willingness to save cannot be greater than theirs, yet they came short of the land, for sin carried in the heart inevitably brings ruin.

❧