In several places, the Rabbis of the Gemara referred to the book we just started as Sefer HaPikudim.It is a name that, in my view, has been mistranslated into the standing English title for this book – Numbers. Pikudim means “countings” and though that obviously implies numbers, such a translation emphasizes the wrong part of the exercise of counting that occurs repeatedly in this book.
Clearly, it is not random things that are counted in this book. Upon careful consideration, we see that not only do the ‘countings’ center on tribal censuses but also on repeated lists of tribal leaders and the corresponding Levite clans. Besides census numbers and tribal leaders, the book of Bemidbar also tells us about each tribe’s marching position, its position in the camp, and with which other two tribes it was aligned.
Hence the Torah takes up a new focus in Bemidbar, paying more attention to the confederate nature of the children of Israel, mentioning the tribes and their leaders over and over again. The shift in focus is sharper still when we note that, after the book of Bereshit, the names of the tribes (named after Ya’akov’s sons) do not appear as actual tribes until we get to the book of Bemidbar. The Torah has gone through two entire books without devoting much, if any, attention to the tribes. Yet once the Torah starts mentioning them in Bemidbar, it repeats them at many points and from many angles.
From this point on, in the Torah and in the Nevi’im, the nation is viewed primarily through its component parts, the tribes.
Understanding this, we can now discern the progression in focus from one book of the Torah to the next. Bereshit dealt with individuals, Shemot concerned itself with founding experiences of the new nation, and Vayikra introduced the religious practices of the new nation. Bemidbar is the book that informs us how individuals relate to their nation as part of more immediate sub-groups. The essence of what we call Sefer Bemidbar might be best conveyed by calling it the Book of the Tribes.
{adapted by Harry Glazer from Rabbi Francis Nataf’s book Redeeming Relevance In the Book of Numbers: Explorations in Text and Meaning (Urim Publications, Jerusalem, 2014)}