Structure
Most commentators structure Numbers in three sections based on locale (Mount Sinai, Kadesh-Barnea and the plains of Moab), linked by two travel sections. This view has the advantage of anchoring Numbers to the Pentateuch as a whole, but an alternative is to see it as structured around the two generations of those condemned to die in the wilderness and the new generation who will enter Canaan, making a theological distinction between the disobedience of the first generation and the obedience of the second.
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“The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
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