Numbers 3:39
All that were numbered of the Levites, which Moses and Aaron numbered at the commandment of the LORD, throughout their families, all the males from a month old and upward, were twenty and two thousand. All that were numbered of the Levites, which Moses and Aaron numbered at the commandment of the LORD, throughout their families, all the males from a month old and upward, were twenty and two thousand.
Moses and Aaron, at the commandment of the Lord, numbered throughout their families all the male Levites from a month old and upward as twenty and two thousand. This numbering belongs to the first of the two numberings of Israel that give the book its name, the other standing near its close, and stands within the opening four chapters dealing with the numbering of the people, the numbering of the tribe of Levi, and the office of the various families of Levi. It is part of the description of the divisions of the sons of Levi, giving a definite number of males from a certain age upward, and belongs to the numbering of the tribes that is to be remembered and compared with the numbering at the close of the forty years to show how the tribes have gained and lost.
The Levites so numbered were assigned to care for the tabernacle, which stood at the center of Israel's wilderness camp. The instruction in the book of Moses for the numbering and ordering of the Levites governed setting the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their courses for the service of God at Jerusalem when the second temple was dedicated. The verse belongs to the levitical law given to the children of Israel, distinct from the law of God which is holy, just, good, absolute and perpetual, and the levitical law was abolished by Christ. The chapter supports that the Aaronic priesthood was established by law for the age before type met antitype, with priestly service vested in Levi, so that during that dispensation a person from another tribe could not serve as a priest.