Numbers 1:18e, “…LE’GUL’GE’LO’TAM” (“…their head count.”)
This Hebrew word is from the word for “skull (as round); by implication, a head (in enumeration of persons):–head, every man, poll, skull.” [STRONG]
The text in question is Numbers 1:18-19,
“And they assembled all the congregation together on the first day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees [genealogy] after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, by their polls GUL’GE’LO’TAM].
“As the LORD commanded Moses, so he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai.”
This word is from the same root as Gilgal in Joshua 5 where God “rolled the reproach of Egypt from off the children of Israel” and where they kept their first Passover in the Land of Promise after crossing the Jordan. On that day the manna stopped and the people ate from the produce of the land. So then, God attentively counts his people one-by-one from beginning to end, from Sinai to Gilgal, from the Cross to the Resurrection.
The point that I am stressing in this devotion is that every individual in the nation is of primary importance. This principle finds its equivalent in the Gospel in John 3:16 where Jesus laid emphasis on individual decision, individual faith and individual salvation.
In the introduction to Numbers in the Orthodox TANAKH the editor says cogently, “…the fact that the people were counted as individuals proves the infinite worth of every Jew.” In the same way, the fact that every individual Christian makes his or her own decision to follow Jesus our Lord through the confession of faith and through the rite of baptism provokes the understanding that each of us is worth the body and blood of our Savior. There is no higher value in all existence, either in Eternity or in the Cosmos. Our value is infinite. And, there is no greater honor than to be immersed into the Messiah and through Him into the Family of God.*
What are you worth?
More than you know.
Love,
Brother Bron.
________
[*Ephesians 3:14-19, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fulness of God.”—KJV, updated]
