|Overview - Numbers 4|
|1||The age at which the Levites were to begin to serve, and the duration of the service.|
|4||The duty of the Kohathites.|
|16||The charge of Eleazar.|
|17||The office of the priests.|
|21||The duty of the Gershonites;|
|29||of the Merarites.|
|34||The number of the Kohathites;|
|38||of the Gershonites ||42 ||and of the Merarites. |
Numbers 4:44 (King James Version)
Even those that were numbered of them after their families, were three thousand and two hundred.
- The family of Merari, though smaller than either of the other families of Levi, yet had a greater number of able men than any of them; for out of Numbers 4:6 Numbers 4:200 ; males of a month old and upwards, we find Numbers 4:3 Numbers 4:200 ; who were neither too young nor too old for the service of the sanctuary; which was more than one-half of their whole number. In this the wisdom and providence of God appear most conspicuously; for the Merarites were charged with the heaviest part of the sanctuary, as the boards, bars, sockets, etc; and though waggons were afterwards provided for them, yet the loading and unloading of the sockets, and other things of great weight, would require much strength, both bodily and numerical
- (Compare ver. 36, ; 40, ; with ch. 3:22 28, ; 24.) Thus God ever manifests his wisdom, in fitting men for the work to which they are appointed, whether with respect to number or gifts: "For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit; to another faith, by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will."
- 3:34 Deuteronomy 33:25 ; 1 Corinthians 10:13 ; 12:8-12 2 Corinthians 12:9 2 Corinthians 12:10