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Context No. 1209 of 4322 · Numbers

Context · Reflection

Numbers 4:17-23: in context

17The LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 18“Don’t cut off the tribe of the families of the Kohathites from among the Levites; 19but do this to them, that they may live, and not die, when they approach the most holy things: Aaron and his sons shall go in and appoint everyone to his service and to his burden; 20but they shall not go in to see the sanctuary even for a moment, lest they die.” 21The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 22“Take a census of the sons of Gershon also, by their fathers’ houses, by their families; 23you shall count them from thirty years old and upward until fifty years old: all who enter in to wait on the service, to do the work in the Tent of Meeting.

God gives careful instructions about how the Kohathites, the Levite clan responsible for carrying the most holy objects of the tabernacle, are to do their work. He warns Moses and Aaron to protect them: do not let the Kohathites be cut off; do this so they may live and not die when they approach the most holy things. Aaron and his sons must go in and assign each man his task and his burden, and the Kohathites are not even to look at the holy things for a moment, lest they die.

The striking thing is the seriousness, even the danger, attached to the holy. The Kohathites had the privilege of carrying the sacred objects, but the passage is full of warnings, so they may live and not die, lest they die, because approaching the holy carelessly was genuinely perilous. God gives detailed protections precisely because he wants them to survive their service, but the survival depends on approaching with the reverence the holy requires, each with his assigned task, none presuming to look where he ought not. It is a picture our casual age has largely lost, that the holy is not to be treated lightly, that coming into the presence of God is a weighty, even fearful privilege, not a casual familiarity. God is not safe in the sense of tame; approaching him is a real thing with real weight. And yet notice the tenderness underneath the warnings: all of it is so they may live. God's carefulness about the holy is not to keep his people away but to keep them safe as they draw near, providing the boundaries within which the privilege of nearness does not destroy them. Reverence is not the opposite of intimacy with God; it is what makes the intimacy survivable.

Have I lost the sense that approaching God is a weighty privilege, treating the holy with a casualness scripture warns against, and could a recovered reverence be the very thing that makes nearness to him safe?

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