hung upon the mouth. Eliezer gave one to Rebekah which was of gold and
weighed half a shekel...At the present day the women in the country and in
the desert wear these ornaments in one of the sides of the nostrils, which
droop like the ears in consequence.”
- NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE Besides the numbering of the tribes
mentioned in the history of the wanderings in the wilderness, we have an
account of a general census of the whole nation from Dan to Beersheba,
which David gave directions to Joab to make (1 Chronicles 21:1). Joab
very reluctantly began to carry out the king’s command.
This act of David in ordering a numbering of the people arose from pride
and a self-glorifying spirit. It indicated a reliance on his part on an arm of
flesh, an estimating of his power not by the divine favour but by the
material resources of his kingdom. He thought of military achievement and
of conquest, and forgot that he was God’s vicegerent. In all this he sinned
against God. While Joab was engaged in the census, David’s heart smote
him, and he became deeply conscious of his fault; and in profound
humiliation he confessed, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done.” The
prophet Gad was sent to him to put before him three dreadful alternatives
(2 Samuel 24:13; for “seven years” in this verse, the LXX. and 1
Chronicles 21:12 have “three years”), three of Jehovah’s four sore
judgments (Ezekiel 14:21). Two of these David had already experienced.
He had fled for some months before Absalom, and had suffered three
years’ famine on account of the slaughter of the Gibeonites. In his “strait”
David said, “Let me fall into the hands of the Lord.” A pestilence broke
out among the people, and in three days swept away 70,000. At David’s
intercession the plague was stayed, and at the threshing-floor of Araunah
(q.v.), where the destroying angel was arrested in his progress, David
erected an altar, and there offered up sacrifies to God (2 Chronicles 3:1).
The census, so far as completed, showed that there were at least 1,300,000
fighting men in the kingdom, indicating at that time a population of about
six or seven millions in all. (See CENSUS.)
- NUMBERS, BOOK OF the fourth of the books of the Pentateuch, called
in the Hebrew be-midbar, i.e., “in the wilderness.” In the LXX. version it
is called “Numbers,” and this name is now the usual title of the book. It is
so called because it contains a record of the numbering of the people in the