Take the Levites in place of all the firstborn of Israel, and the livestock of the Levites in place of their livestock. The Levites are to be mine. I am the LORD. – Numbers 3:45

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 19, 2018): Numbers 3

Debt bothers me. I believe that debt is seldom ever warranted. Yet, First World nations seem to be in the midst of a debt crisis. And for some, that crisis is coming to a head. The debt has outstripped the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the nations, and some are beginning to run to the end of their ability to borrow money at a rate that will allow the country to grow economically. On top of their inability to borrow money, the cost of what they already owe is consuming large chunks of income that they can take in with taxes. The result is a loss of services for the population.

Admittedly, maybe I am naïve. But it seems that if we didn’t have the debt, if we didn’t have to pay large chunks of money on the interest demands that are a direct result of our debt, we would have the money we need to spend on things like education and healthcare, as well as the care for our aging population. Part of the monetary crunch being experienced by the First World governments is directly attributable to the debt that we have incurred.

Recently I had a chance to talk to a local politician around the idea of governmental or public debt. And his chosen response was to paraphrase Ecclesiastes 3; There is a time for everything under heaven, and that would include a time to borrow and a time to pay back. My problem with the argument is that few governments, including this representative’s, want to endure the pain of living in a time to pay back. It is much more fun to be able to spend freely in the time to borrow. What scares me is that our governments are incurring so much debt, that my children and grandchildren are going to be the ones forced to suffer to pay back the debt for which we have experieinced the benefit.

As the journey of Israel continues, there is an acknowledged debt of the firstborn. There has been so much going on during the early years of the Exodus, that this debt seems to have been ignored. But now a time has come for an accounting. In reality, the terms were already known, but now the loan was being called, and the debt had to be paid. In exchange for the firstborn males that had been born to the nation during the early stages of the Exodus, God was taking a tribe of people who would be his. They would be the priests and the worship leaders. They would make up the support staff who would maintain the Tabernacle. When Israel came into the Promised Land, they would not receive any of the lands, but instead would be scattered throughout the tribes of Israel.

God was taking the Levites as his own, a substitute for the first-born. And it would be up to the people to make provision to care for the Levites as they cared for the Tabernacle. The Levites were God’s possession, and they would stand in the midst of the nation representing the presence of God in Israel.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Numbers 4