The verse names Eliab as a son of Pallu in Israel's genealogy, belonging to the census genealogy recorded in the second numbering of the host. That numbering answers to the first numbering at the opening of the book of Numbers in chapter 1. It was taken at the end of and after nearly forty years of wilderness wandering, forty years after the first census, near the end of that period and just before the people entered Canaan. It was taken in the plains of Moab, thirty-eight years after the census at Sinai.
It was taken by Moses at the Lord's command, and unlike David's census it was authorized by God and brought no trouble. The second numbering is to be compared with the first in Numbers 1 to note how the tribes gained or lost, fell off or increased, and changed in number during the wilderness journey. The two enumerations show that the nation's total number of adult males changed little, while the sizes of the individual tribes changed considerably.
Apart from Caleb and Joshua, not one man counted in the first numbering was alive to witness the second, for all others who had rebelled had fallen and died in the wilderness, showing beyond dispute that God's threatened judgments had been accomplished. The failure came because the people were wicked, with sin in their midst breaking out at last in open, wanton rebellion against God, so that by a solemn oath He excluded them from the land and doomed them to die in the wilderness. The second numbering was calculated to impress the people that God will fulfill His threatened judgments, and it teaches those upon whom the ends of the world are come that sin cannot be carried in the heart without inevitable ruin, warning them not to follow Israel's example though their hopes of the kingdom and tokens of God's favor, presence, and willingness to save were no greater when first numbered.
The verse names Eliab as a son of Pallu in Israel's genealogy, belonging to the census genealogy recorded in the second numbering of the host. That numbering answers to the first numbering at the opening of the book of Numbers in chapter 1. It was taken at the end of and after nearly forty years of wilderness wandering, forty years after the first census, near the end of that period and just before the people entered Canaan. It was taken in the plains of Moab, thirty-eight years after the census at Sinai.
It was taken by Moses at the Lord's command, and unlike David's census it was authorized by God and brought no trouble. The second numbering is to be compared with the first in Numbers 1 to note how the tribes gained or lost, fell off or increased, and changed in number during the wilderness journey. The two enumerations show that the nation's total number of adult males changed little, while the sizes of the individual tribes changed considerably.
Apart from Caleb and Joshua, not one man counted in the first numbering was alive to witness the second, for all others who had rebelled had fallen and died in the wilderness, showing beyond dispute that God's threatened judgments had been accomplished. The failure came because the people were wicked, with sin in their midst breaking out at last in open, wanton rebellion against God, so that by a solemn oath He excluded them from the land and doomed them to die in the wilderness. The second numbering was calculated to impress the people that God will fulfill His threatened judgments, and it teaches those upon whom the ends of the world are come that sin cannot be carried in the heart without inevitable ruin, warning them not to follow Israel's example though their hopes of the kingdom and tokens of God's favor, presence, and willingness to save were no greater when first numbered.