Literary Devices in Book of Numbers
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
All the action in The Book of Numbers takes place in the vast, open desert wilderness between Egypt and Canaan (which would—spoiler alert—one day become Israel). Though the Israelites spend the...
What's Up With the Title?
The title of The Book of Numbers refers to—what else—all the numbers contained in it. God commands Moses to take a census in the opening pages of the book and again forty years later. Chapters...
What's Up With the Ending?
Numbers is all about a journey. The Israelites have been trying to get to the Promised Land for the last forty years. Now here they are, literally looking down on this land flowing with milk and ho...
Trivia
Numbers 21:14 ever so briefly mentions another little writing called The Book of the Wars of the Lord. This book has never been found (bummer), but scholars guess that it was probably a collection...
Sex Drugs And Violence Rating
For a nice little story about a road trip, Numbers can get pretty gory. There's not much in the way of drugs and sex (unless you count all those warnings against adultery), but violence? Whoa. The...
Allusions
Paradiso by Dante Alighieri Dante gets a peek at Joshua, whose reward in the afterlife comes in the form of hanging out in the fifth sphere of Heaven on Mars. Hey, it beats wandering in the desert,...