The Good Book Club: Week 13 - and new merch for kids! 🎉

Mar 22, 2026

Reminder — Tiny Theologian Merch is Here! 🎉

Special Announcement: We’ve launched Tiny Theologian merch for kids!

This design is available in youth shirts in black, navy blue, and white, and in youth hats in black, navy blue, khaki, and white.

This is a way you can share this Bible study with your kids, and another way you can support this free Bible Study. 🕊️

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We are reading:

This week we finish Numbers.

We have the origin of the infamous red heifer prophecy — a necessary ritual before rebuilding the third temple, rooted in Numbers 19.

We meet Balaam, a pagan prophet who can hear God more clearly than most of the Israelites, and his talking donkey.

We say goodbye to Miriam and Aaron, and are reminded of Joshua.

And Moses finally gets to see the Promised Land — knowing that he will never enter it.

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Korah leads a rebellion against Moses and the earth literally opens up and swallows them whole? Lord, I pray you bring upon my enemies this kind of divine judgment 🙏
The people are still grumbling about Moses and Aaron so God has Moses present a staff from each tribe — and miraculously, Aarons staff sprouts ripe almonds, signifying his authority as a chosen leader

We encounter a lot of the “weirder” parts of scripture this week — including the red heifer prophecy. This is one of the Bible’s most cryptic rites. The ashes of the red heifer purify the unclean, however those who prepare it become unclean themselves.
Miriam dies.
Water again becomes a prominent storyline. Moses is told by God to impress the ever-complaining Israelites by speaking over a rock and getting water to flow from it — but in frustration, he strikes the rock, and though water flows, it costs him entry into the promised land.
Aaron dies, before reaching the promised land.
Then comes yet another strange story: after the Israelites complain about their circumstances yet again, saying they hate manna, fiery serpents overrun the camp. God tells Moses to form a bronze serpent and attach it to a pole. The people are healed of snake bites by looking directly at the image of what afflicts them. Is this the world’s first brush with homeopathy?
There is mention of The Book of the Wars of the Lord — a lost book of the Bible that I would love to read.

The King of Moab, afraid of the Israelites, sends for Balaam to curse them. Balaam, a foreign prophet who is able to perceive God more clearly than Israel, refuses to curse the Israelites as God tells him they have been blessed.
Not only can Balaam hear God — his donkey clearly sees the Angel of the Lord multiple times. After the third time, God gives the donkey they ability to talk — by unbinding his mouth — seemingly confirming that animals used to be able to talk but are now bound. Balaam then is only able to speak the words the Lord allows to come from his mouth, which again, seems metaphorical.
Balak, King of Moab, repeatedly tries to get Balaam to curse the Israelites — however, Balaam is constrained and can only bless them as God has.

Ok, as if the talking donkey wasn’t crazy enough, the Israelites quickly fall into idolatry and sexual deviance as they worshop Baal with the Moabites. God is furious and hits the Israelites with a plague — until Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, drives a spear through an Israelite man and Midianite woman mid-act and stops it — but not before 24,000 people died.
How do we know 24,000 people died? The census! Which they take again in the wake of this idolatrous destruction — documenting that all the Israelites of Moses and Aaron’s generation have now died off (except Caleb and Joshua), meaning the next generation can now inhabit the promised land.
Zelophehad’s daughters challenge inheritance laws — and win. Proving that God is a feminist lol jk, He is simply just and fair.

On the precipice of entering the promised land, Moses is given yet another dense set of sacrifice rules.
Then vows are addressed, particularly those made by women. A father or husband can nullify them — a callback to Adam’s neglected responsibility for Eve.

Moses is instructed to go to war against the Midianites, as his final earthly battle to lead the Israelites to the promised land. When the Israelite leaders spare the women, Moses tells them not to, since those very women were those that followed Balaam’s teaching to seduce the Israelite men to worship Baal.

God maps out the promised land in detail — telling Moses the boundaries of the land they are to inhabit, and assigning territories to the tribes.