Do you have a book you could read every day of your life and never tire of it? It would have to be a pretty long book, right? And have all sorts of genres in it, like, poetry, war stories, love stories, tales of friendship, hardship, miracles, mysteries, and of course, happy endings.
Yet, if you read from the same book daily for over twenty years, and all the way through so many times you stopped counting, it would be rare to find something completely new in it. But that’s exactly how I felt reading the Bible recently in Numbers 21. Yes, I said the book of Numbers, lol, of all places!
Numbers 21:14 starts out, “That is why the Book of the Wars of the Lord says…” Wait what? What book is that? I mean, I remember places where the Bible quoted the Psalms or referred to the Chronicles of Kings, or referring to the Torah or any number of New Testament passages referring to Old Testament passages. But, a book of wars? And of the Lord? What’s a war of the Lord? So many questions! Isn’t it so awesome that we have a God to whom we can ask questions? Amen!
Seek and you will find, says the Lord (Matthew 7:7). So when we do not understand something, we can seek to find the answers. The best explanation I found said the book was “an ancient collection of war songs used by Moses and other scribes as a source of information” (Numbers 21:1–35, Tyndale’s Concise Bible Commentary).
Later in the same chapter, it says, “that is why the poets say…” (numbers 21:27). Tyndale had no explanation on that reference to poets. What poets? Aristotel? Hercules? JK. He wasn’t a poet! But that one song, “I know every mile, will be worth the while…I can go the distance!” (Disney). Let’s put a hold on the poets for the moment and rewind to the Book of the Wars of the Lord.
So did that mean wars that were not of the Lord were not included? Was it only a book involving Israel at war with other nations? “Wars of the Lord…?”
And a whole book on it! Tyndale referred to it as a book of war songs. Like… “We are the Champions,” by Queen and “Keep walking” as sung by the French Peas in Veggie Tales? What song does one sing at war? Who knows. But we all know they sang because Scripture mentions that elsewhere.
And what did Tyndale mean when he said they used it for information? Was it their war playbook? Did it have the Amorites’ game plans in there? And the Edomites’, and all the nations’? What kind of information? In Numbers 21 where the book is quoted, the excerpt describes the geography of the land. Did they use songs instead of county government centers to record what land belonged to what nation?
I have more questions than I have time to find the answers today. Do you ever have days reading the Bible like that? I love that no matter how long I read the Bible, God always has something fresh for me. He does for you too. Often when I have so many questions, I ask God all my questions and then trust Him to answer in His timing and/or to give me time to seek the answers myself.
I remember reading a passage as a child and being confused. Twenty years later, I heard that exact passage explained to me. Seeking God and learning His Word is a lifelong thing. We do not have to understand it all to simply read it. We do not have to understand God fully to follow Him. Faith has a place (Hebrews 11). Understanding comes in time. (And usually God explains things much quicker than 20 years!) As Jean Valjean said in the 2012 movie Les Miserables, “truth is given by God to us all in our time.” Trust Him today as you journey to know and understand God more.