Numbers 1:11-15: in context

The English name of this book, Numbers, comes from the two great head counts that frame it. At Sinai, God tells Moses to count Israel tribe by tribe, both to organize the people for the march to the promised land and to know the size of the fighting force. To run the count, one leader is named from each tribe. This passage is a stretch of that roster: five chiefs and their fathers, for Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Gad, and Naphtali.

On its face it is nothing but paperwork, a list of officials most readers will pass over and never think about again. But look at the names themselves. Ahiezer means my brother is help. Ammishaddai means my kinsman is the Almighty. Eliasaph means God has added. Most of the names on the list carry a fragment of God's name, or a claim about him, folded inside. The parents who chose these names had built a small confession of faith into each child.

So here is a muster roll, and God is stitched into almost every entry. Even the most routine record of a people can be soaked in what they believed, if the belief ran deep enough to reach the naming of their children. What in my most ordinary records, the calendar, the ledger, the list of contacts, would show what I actually trust, if someone read it closely?