Who wrote the book of Numbers? Who was the author of Numbers?

It is the wilderness book and covers the entire period of Israel 's history from the second month of the second year after the Exodus from Egypt to the tenth month of the fortieth year. However, the years of wanderings are passed over in silence, only the different camps are mentioned. Our annotations point out the significance of this.

The Author of Numbers

Numbers is closely linked with Leviticus, though it differs greatly from it. Moses wrote the record of the events in the wilderness as he wrote the instructions Jehovah gave concerning the worship of His people. Only a person who was contemporaneous with the events recorded in Numbers could have been the author of this book. In chapter 33:2 we find a statement to the effect that Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys. If Moses did not write the book, who then was the author? If the Mosaic authorship is denied the genuineness and trustworthiness of the entire book must be given up. Higher criticism, so called, claims that Moses did not write Numbers and that the book itself was not contemporary with the events it describes. They call attention that throughout the book Moses is referred to in the third person. They make much of chapter 12:3, as bearing definite testimony against Moses as the author. (For the explanation see our annotations on that chapter.) The same documents, compilers and redactors, etc., which, as it is claimed, composed the other books of the Pentateuch, and put them into shape in which we have them, centuries after Moses lived, are also brought into play in connection with Numbers. It would be more than unprofitable to follow these foolish theories which have laid the foundation to the most serious denials of the revelation of God.

Just as, at the judgment seat of Christ, there will be a review of all our history here on earth, so we find now a review of Israel's journey from the time they left Egypt. It is noted that Moses wrote the record of these things at the command of the Lord (v.2) and it is quite evident that Moses was the writer of all of Numbers and also of Deuteronomy except the last chapter, or at least the last nine verses of that chapter.

Take Numbers — the history of the journeyings of God's people through the wilderness. "These things," says the apostle, "happened to them for examples [types], and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come." Who was it that wrote them for us? Certainly not Moses (although he was the human instrument), but He who knoweth the end from the beginning, and who orders all things according to His good pleasure.

Numbers seems to be equally impossible to be attributed to any other than Moses, making allowance for an inspired editor's slight additions. For it presents the circumstances of the march through the wilderness with the suited commandments of Jehovah. It has (if we believe the apostle in 1 Cor. 10) a spiritual bearing on the Christian pilgrim which only divine wisdom could have combined, yet characteristic of the prophets, and of one only inferior to the highest, who had ample leisure and conferred power to indite as God enjoined, with love for Israel and yet more for Jehovah. This spared neither the people nor the misleaders, neither Aaron, nor Miriam, nor himself. Is not this as edifying as it contrasts with any pretended sacred book of man?

The arguments of modern critics in derogation of the Mosaic authority of the Pentateuch are not of such weight as to set aside the internal evidence of the sacred books themselves, which supports the constant conviction of the Jewish people and uninterrupted Church tradition. These books have Moses for their author and have not been put together from sources for the most part of later date than his time.

Moses did not write every thing in the Pentateuch with his own hand, or dictate the whole to secretaries. But to such he entrusted the editing of his work, and they gave faithful expression to his thought, without addition or omission. After obtaining Moses' approval of it they published in his name the work so framed by them.

But if Moses did not write the books that bear his name, never were books, we repeat, more honeycombed with lies. His name is woven into Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy hundred’s of times. “And the Lord spake unto Moses,” with its variations, is a formula repeated dozens of times, and it were blasphemy to write it down again and again if it were not true. As we have said, our Lord attributed these books to the authorship of Moses. The testimony of the Jews, their jealous guardianship of the sacred volume, the way it is woven into the history of the children of Israel, all bear irresistible testimony to the authorship of Moses, and hence to this memorial, beginning at the time, of the alleged fact, thus meeting the requirements of Mark No. 4.

The Fourth Book of the Pentateuch is inadequately described by the title given in the versions generally. Nor is the usual Jewish expedient of the first words better rendered, "And spoke;" others say what is given later in the verse, "In the wilderness," which fairly presents its scope. For, as we have seen in its predecessors, this book has no less impressed on its contents a worthy divine design, which we as Christians are enabled by the Holy Spirit to apprehend and enjoy, in a way impossible to the Israelites or even to Moses its writer. "Now all those things happened to them as types; and they were written for our admonition on whom the ends of the ages are come" (1 Cor. 10:11). This to the believer is decisive authority, far from excluding the book of Exodus, but fully extending to Numbers. The history, as far as it goes, is thoroughly reliable; but the typical instruction, as we are taught, was the aim and motive of the Holy Spirit. And this it is which accounts for repetitions and a seeming disorder in parts, which is the best order for the truth intended by the divine Author. If the Neo-critics had only reverent faith to learn, they would be kept from a wholly ungrounded pretension to judge what is above their powers, and might apprehend the goodness and wisdom of God's revealed mind to their blessing for evermore.

There can be no question either that these first five books were written by Moses. This does not raise the question of whether other writings more or less connected may have been used by him, for instance in the book of Genesis; but we have evidently there, as a continuous narrative with a distinct object, from the first chapter to the close of the book, that which is the product of one inspired person, whatever material he may have used in the preparation of his work; just as an author now may quote largely and use much material gathered by others in the preparation of a work which is distinctly his own.

No believer would refuse to the Pentateuch what he owns unhesitatingly in the Psalter, if there were similar grounds of faith. But the declarations of God are clearly and expressly opposed to any such conclusion, and the internal structure of the law too has nothing in common with that of the Psalms, but to my mind falls in so simply and naturally with the single authorship of Moses, that the real difficulty would have been to have supposed more than one if the question otherwise had been absolutely open. If the Lord and the apostles had not corroborated irrefragably the Mosaic authorship, both the style and the line of inspired Jewish witnesses, not to speak of the evident claim of Moses to all implied in Deuteronomy, would point to this conclusion.

Such then is the true explanation of the duplicate accounts, as they have been styled. If difference of authors or of documents had any real evidence, it in no way covers the facts; it really introduces mere imagination to set aside the positive declarations of the Lord and the apostles, who attribute to Moses expressly what a groundless fancy distributes among 2, 3, 5, 10, or even more imaginary writers of the disjecta membra of the Pentateuch severed from each other by considerable intervals of time.