B'midbar

Numbers 1:1−4:20

Questioning Chronology

The lack of chronological order in Parashat B'midbar allows expressions of God's love for Israel to precede the trials and tribulations of desert wandering.
It is surprising that the sometimes tumultuous book of B'midbar commences with such a prosaic passage as the taking of a census:

And Hashem spoke to Moshe in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year of their coming out from the land of Egypt, saying: Take a census of all the congregation of the Children of Israel by their families, by their fathers' houses, with the number of names, every male by their head count (B'midbar 1:1-2).

Censuses, here and later (chapter 26), give this book its Rabbinic name Pekudim (accounts), and its English name (based on the Septuagint), Numbers.

Nevertheless, when we look ahead to what will transpire in this book--the conflicts, the rebellions, the instabilities and the crushing disappointments--we are struck by the uncharacteristic placidity of its opening section, discussing the census and the careful ordering of the encampments.

It is particularly hard to understand why B'midbar opens this way when we consider that it could have been otherwise. A close reading reveals that the Torah changes conventional chronology in order to start with the census. Rashi, Ibn-Ezra, (12th-century Spain) and Ramban (Nachmanides) agree that, at the beginning of the Israelites' second year in the wilderness, the seven days of ordaining the Kohanim (priests) (Vayikra, chapter 8) and the 12 days of dedication of the altar (B'midbar, chapter 7) all precede the census.

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