Worship in Numbers and Deuteronomy

Idolaters worshipping at Baal-Peor in Numbers 25

The situation of worship in the book of Numbers is pretty dire, folks. Time and again, the Israelites as a whole failed to properly worship God, appreciate his help, and trust him.

Notably, we see again in these books, the connection between worship and morality. Their biggest temptation was not that they somehow believed foreign gods were helping them as much as the Lord. Their temptation was immorality shrouded in pagan religion (Numbers 25). Just like the Golden Calf incident, the types of idolatry the Israelites were susceptible to was aimed at the pagan fertility gods.It wasn’t that they were so foolish to think these pagan gods were helping them; rather, the pagan worship gave them the excuse to practice immoral acts.

For this reason, the book of Deuteronomy instructs the Israelites, in preparation for when their descendants are to enter the Promised Land, are to not allow any pagan idols or altars to remain (Deuteronomy 12). It is complete religious intolerance. Israel is too weak to co-exist! They are too easily tempted! Their worship is to be centralized only where the Lord seeks to make his Name dwell and only following his specific instruction.

2 Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods.
3 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
4 You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.
5 But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go;
Deuteronomy 12:2-5

From the Catechism
Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Many martyrs died for not adoring “the Beast” refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.
CCC, 2113

Worship Under the Proper Authority

In the Book of Numbers, we see some people challenge the leadership of Aaron and God does not mince words that his appointed leaders should not be undermined. A rebellious group of Levites seek to wrest the leadership away from Aaron (Moses’ brother and the high priest) questioning whether the community should have any leader at all: “They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD’s assembly?” (Numbers 16:3).

God was not pleased they did not obey his structure of leadership and punished them and anyone associated with them by having the ground swallow them up (Numbers 16:31).

According to the Old Testament, it does matter to God that we do not rebel against the leadership thinking ourselves better than or not needing the structure he established!

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
At the ordination of priests, the Church prays:

Lord, holy Father, . . .
when you had appointed high priests to rule your people,
you chose other men next to them in rank and dignity
to be with them and to help them in their task. . . . you extended the spirit of Moses to seventy wise men. . . .
You shared among the sons of Aaron
the fullness of their father’s power.¹³
CCC, 1542

Levites and Leviticus

Worship is so essential to the growth of the Israelites that an entire book of the Bible, Leviticus, is devoted to the laws of right worship. Perhaps that is why it can be difficult to read! It is a book of very meticulous laws regulating the rules the Levites were to follow.

The Levites are the priestly tribe. Following the Golden Calf incident they stood up to their brother tribes and punished them for their evil worship. Before the Golden Calf incident, all Israelites were called to be a “kingdom of priests.” They abdicated that and so now only the Levites maintain priestly duties. They are the only ones allowed in the Tent of Meeting, and they intercede for all Israel. They hear the sins of the people and offer atoning sacrifices for them. They make judicial decisions as well.

Interestingly, all the other tribes are promised a parcel of land once they enter the land of Canaan, land which we recall is purposed for the worship of God, the Levites are not to receive any land of their own. Instead, Scripture says, “You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel” (Numbers 18:20). The Levites are a step ahead of their brother tribes in terms of being priestly. The inheritance of physical land is a step towards the ultimate inheritance, the Lord himself.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
The chosen people was constituted by God as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” But within the people of Israel, God chose one of the twelve tribes, that of Levi, and set it apart for liturgical service; God himself is its inheritance. A special rite consecrated the beginnings of the priesthood of the Old Covenant. The priests are “appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.”
CCC, 1539

The Golden Calf

Despite their agreement to worship God not only with proper liturgy, but also with proper behavior by obeying the Ten Commandments, the Israelites failed. They worshipped an Egyptian god, the Golden Calf. Not only was this the wrong form of worship from a liturgical standpoint since they were worshipping a pagan god, but their form of worship was morally wrong. Worship of the Golden Calf, a fertility god, involved violating the commandment for chastity. They had rejected God, participated in pagan worship, and failed to live uprightly by this act of idolatry.

Their waywardness was met with just punishment from God. Though God had not rejected them, he was going to place more stringent rules on them to protect them from their habit of falling into false worship. Now their worship was going to require regular animal sacrifice, particularly of cattle, sheep, and goats. Why? Because that is what the Egyptians (and many Israelites!) worshipped. The Israelites are going to habitually sacrifice the animals, disavowing them as pagan deities every time they worshipped the Lord. God’s new laws of worship were therapeutic and rehabilitative.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
To adore God is to acknowledge, in respect and absolute submission, the “nothingness of the creature” who would not exist but for God. To adore God is to praise and exalt him and to humble oneself, as Mary did in the Magnificat, confessing with gratitude that he has done great things and holy is his name. The worship of the one God sets man free from turning in on himself, from the slavery of sin and the idolatry of the world.
CCC, 2097

Instructions for Worship

Illustration of the Tent of Meeting (brown) surrounded by portable walls.

In the Book of Exodus, God gives Moses intricate instructions on the Tent of Meeting and the Tabernacle. This was a tent that was to be built up during the times when the Israelites were camped, and taken down and carried when they were journeying to the Promised Land. God gave instructions for the Tent of Meeting including detailed descriptions of a basin, or lavar, for ritual washing, an altar for sacrifice, blessed bread called the Bread of the Presence, lampstands (what would look like Menorah), and most importantly, the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was the innermost part of the Tent of Meeting where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.

Rendition of the Ark of the Covenant. It was laden all about with gold and carried by long handles. Statues of two cherubim were placed on the cover.

The Ark of the Covenant was a golden box which contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments, mannah, and Aaron’s priestly staff. God overshadowed the Ark of the Covenant (his glory cloud visibly descended upon it in the form of a cloud and light) and from that point on it was known to hold the very presence of God. The high priest would pray before the Ark of the Covenant and know that he was speaking to God “face to face.”

This Ark became the central focus of Israel’s worship. God dwelt there among them! God’s presence and the worship directed to God became oriented toward the Ark and the Tent of Meeting which housed it.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Cloud and light. These two images occur together in the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. In the theophanies of the Old Testament, the cloud, now obscure, now luminous, reveals the living and saving God, while veiling the transcendence of his glory – with Moses on Mount Sinai, at the tent of meeting, and during the wandering in the desert, and with Solomon at the dedication of the Temple. In the Holy Spirit, Christ fulfills these figures. The Spirit comes upon the Virgin Mary and “overshadows” her, so that she might conceive and give birth to Jesus. On the mountain of Transfiguration, the Spirit in the “cloud came and overshadowed” Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter, James and John, and “a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!'” Finally, the cloud took Jesus out of the sight of the disciples on the day of his ascension and will reveal him as Son of man in glory on the day of his final coming.
CCC, 697

The Sabbath Day

In creation, God creates the world on six days and then rests on the seventh day. He did not rest because he was tired, but because he wanted Adam and Eve to enter into his sabbath rest. He did not want them only consumed with the earthly—beautiful as it was—rather, he wanted Adam and Eve to move their gaze towards Heaven and see God as their true purpose.

The sabbath becomes a major theme in the Old Testament. It is, like the Passover, a measure of Israel’s fidelity to God. In the full commandment, God says, “”Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God” (Exodus 20:8—10). The sabbath is about rest, but rest oriented to the Lord. It is a day of worship.

God says this to the Prophet Isaiah, “If you turn back your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Isaiah 58:13—14). Rewards lie in store for those who keep the Sabbath.

On the contrary, the prophet Ezekiel, many centuries after the Exodus, reminds the people of his time exactly why things turned out so badly for the Israelites in the desert: “Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands, because they rejected my ordinances and did not walk in my statutes, and profaned my sabbaths; for their heart went after their idols.” (Ezekiel 20: 15—16). Improper worship is punished by not being in communion with God and not reaping the benefits of his friendship.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
God entrusted the sabbath to Israel to keep as a sign of the irrevocable covenant.⁹⁵ The sabbath is for the Lord, holy and set apart for the praise of God, his work of creation, and his saving actions on behalf of Israel.
CCC, 2171

The Ten Commandments

Shortly after leaving Egypt, God again brings worship front and center to the minds of the Israelites by giving very detailed instructions for how God wants to be worshipped. He not only instructs them on the rituals and design of the worship space called the Tabernacle and Tent of Meeting, he gives moral instructions in the Ten Commandments for how they are to order their lives as an act of worship. Their worship does not merely involve the sacrificing of cattle sheep and goats, but the sacrifices of their attachment to sin. Right worship necessarily involves upright living. He calls all the Israelites to be a “kingdom of priests” and “holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) Priestly worship and holiness go hand in hand.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Commandments properly so-called come in the second place: they express the implications of belonging to God through the establishment of the covenant. Moral existence is a response to the Lord’s loving initiative. It is the acknowledgement and homage given to God and a worship of thanksgiving. It is cooperation with the plan God pursues in history.
CCC 2062

The Promised Land

The Promised land is very important to the entire plot of the Bible. Why does it take such a prominent role and how can this help us understand the importance of worship?

It is called the Promised Land because God promised it to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12:1-3). The land is a home for God’s people where God provides for them not only the necessities, but also the extras in life, the “milk and honey.”

God had a much greater purpose for this land than mere real estate. He states that he intends this to be a place “to make his name dwell” (Deuteronomy 26:2). God wants the land to be a place of communion with him. It is a place of worship. He says, “‘Since the day that I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I chose no city in all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house, that my name might be there” (1Kings 8:16).

The land is given so God can have a house for his name to dwell. The house is the temple, their place of worship.

We are going to want to pay attention in the story: when God’s people do end up in the land, are they using it for its intended purpose to worship God? Does the theme of the land lay the foundation for understanding our ultimate goal of Heaven?

From the Catechism
In the Old Covenant bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God; their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of God’s faithfulness to his promises. The “cup of blessing” at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup.
CCC, 1334

Worship in the Exodus

Moving to the book of Exodus, we see worship plays an important part in driving the whole plot of this book and the ones that follow. After 400 years of being in Egypt, God’s people, Israel, began to follow the customs of the Egyptians and instead of worshipping God, they began to worship the pagan gods (see Ezekiel 20:8). God initially requests not to withdraw Israel from Egypt forever, but only for three days for them to offer proper worship to God. Their sacrifices of cattle, sheep, and goats would have been offensive to the Egyptians who worshipped these animals as gods (Exodus 8:25). Excusing them temporarily in the wilderness would have allowed them to worship and reconnect with the God of their fathers. Pharoah refused.

This refusal led to the permanent departure of the Israelites from Egypt. Their Exodus came through an act of worship: the Passover sacrifice. Their liberation was not a military act nor a show of strength. It was a liturgy, a ritual of worship in which the Israelites were to follow God’s instructions. If they were obedient, they would be spared the plague and freed to depart for the promise land.

The Passover is the central act of worship in the Old Testament and Israel’s fidelity to faithfully celebrating the Passover is a significant standard by which their relationship with God is measured.

From the Catechism
1363 In the sense of Sacred Scripture the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men. In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt: every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them.

Abraham, the Father of Faith

As Genesis moves on, we encounter Abraham who is model for worshipping God well. Despite having to wrestle with understanding God’s plan for his life, he eventually comes to trust God completely and holds nothing back in his worship of God, not even his own beloved Son, Isaac.

In the dramatic episode where the once childless Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac to God, Abraham does not hesitate or falter in his trust for God. The Book of Hebrews teaches,

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, ¹⁸even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”^[c] ¹⁹Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

—Hebrews 11:17—19

He worshipped God perfectly because he believed in the resurrection of the dead. He held nothing back because of his faith in God.

Worship, then, holds nothing back from God, even the good gifts he has given to us. We love the Giver more than the gifts. Our lives become pure acts of worship when we give over every part of ourselves to God trusting he will accomplish his will. This total self gift can come in the form of the very normal and everyday. Perhaps we have already had to sacrifice things that we love–even very good things–to follow God’s call in our family or our daily work.

From the Catechism:

2572 As a final stage in the purification of his faith, Abraham, “who had received the promises,” is asked to sacrifice the son God had given him. Abraham’s faith does not weaken (“God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering.”), for he “considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead.” And so the father of believers is conformed to the likeness of the Father who will not spare his own Son but will deliver him up for us all. Prayer restores man to God’s likeness and enables him to share in the power of God’s love that saves the multitude.