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Biblion Bible Commentary

Read the introduction to Numbers · About this commentary

Yahweh Bless You and Keep You

Numbers 6:22-27

22 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, · WEB

The priests are given words to say over the people, and the last line explains that saying them puts God's name on them.

Six verses, and three of them are the oldest blessing still in continuous use.

Yahweh bless you, and keep you. Yahweh make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you. Yahweh lift up his face toward you, and give you peace Numbers 6:24–26.

Three lines, and each is longer than the last. The first has two verbs, the second three, the third four — so the blessing widens as it goes, which is audible when it is spoken aloud.

Each line pairs an action with a disposition. Bless and keep: give good things, and guard what is given. Make his face to shine and be gracious: the light of a face is what a person sees when someone is glad to see them, and grace is what makes that possible for people who have no claim on it. Lift up his face toward you and give you peace: the opposite of a face turned away, which is how Scripture elsewhere describes judgment.

What is asked for is God's attention rather than his gifts. Three of the six requests are about his face.

And peace is the last word — not the absence of trouble but the fullness the Hebrew word carries, everything working as it should.

Then the sentence that explains the whole thing, and it is easy to skip past.

So they shall put my name on the children of Israel; and I will bless them Numbers 6:27.

The priests are not asking God to do something and hoping. Saying the words puts his name on the people, and the blessing follows from him — I will bless them. The men speaking are not the source; they are the ones authorized to attach the name.

It is placed here, immediately after the census, the camp, the Levites and the Nazirite, as the thing the whole apparatus exists to deliver. A nation organized around a tent is given, in six verses, the words that are to be said over it.

settled What this mark means