Got it Covered

Numbers 4: 1-20

So as we learned way back in Numbers 3, the Kohathites were in charge of "the care of the ark, the table, the lampstand, the altars, the articles of the sanctuary used in ministering, the curtain, and everything related to their use."

Moses is to take a second census- this time to see how many Kohathite males are between 30-50 years old who are able to serve in this capacity. I'm not sure what makes these ages magic- maybe they wanted to make sure the workers were old enough to take it seriously and young enough to not be as apt to drop something. Because when you hit 50...

So, Aaron and his sons are to cover everything- the ark with the shielding curtain, hides of sea-cows, and blue cloth; the table of presence with a blue cloth, then the plates, cups, etc., then a scarlet cloth and then sea-cow hides; lampstands and accessories get covered with blue cloth and then wrapped in sea-cow hides; gold altar gets the blue cloth, sea-cow hide treatment as do the ministering articles. The Bronze altar gets its ashes removed and a purple cloth placed over it- then its utensils get placed on it and its covered with the sea-cow hide. All poles are also put in place.

They must have had quite a collection of sea-cow hide.

Once Aaron and Aaron-spawn finish this task, the Kohathites do the lugging. That's right boys, you were chosen- but chosen for grunt work. Congratulations. The covering must be thorough- if the Kohathites touch anything directly, they will die. In fact, it says at the end of this section that if they even look at the holy things, even for a moment, they will die.

Aaron's son, Eleazar, is put in charge of the tabernacle and of everything in it- things like oil and certain offerings are singled out.

God tells them to make sure that the Kohathites aren't cut off from the other Levites. This is a little puzzling- what about this work would cut them off? It seems to have something to do with the sacredness of the work, because He follows up with precautions about contact with the holy items. Aaron's sons are to assign who carries what and the Kohathites carefully carry with their eyes closed and their breath held... just in case. Oh maybe not, eyes closed might heighten the chance of messing up.

This is all a little odd to me. Why all the ceremony surrounding these items. I guess that paying this much respect to them kept them and the ceremony surrounding them fresh and special. It would be hard to sleepwalk through service if you knew it might mean death- although I would suspect that at some point it would reach a monotonous state anyhow.

The emphasis seems to be- these things are holy... you are not- so keep away from them. This seems a bit demeaning- it would be easy to get a complex, feeling like you weren't even good enough to be in the presence of God's dishes- but maybe the reaction should be the opposite- even though you're full of sin- even though you rarely get it right- even though you aren't holy... I love you anyway- you are still My children.