Bemidbar (parashah)

Bemidbar, BeMidbar, B'midbar, Bamidbar, or Bamidbor (בְּמִדְבַּר‎—Hebrew for "in the wilderness of" [Sinai], the fifth overall and first distinctive word in the parashah), is the 34th weekly Torah portion (פָּרָשָׁה‎, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the first in the Book of Numbers. The parashah tells of the census and the priests' duties. It constitutes Numbers 1:1–4:20. The parashah is made up of 7,393 Hebrew letters, 1,823 Hebrew words, 159 verses, and 263 lines in a Torah Scroll (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה‎, Sefer Torah). Jews generally read it in May or early June.

In traditional Sabbath Torah reading, the parashah is divided into seven readings, or עליות‎, aliyot.

In the first reading, in the wilderness, in the second month of the second year following the Exodus from Egypt, God directed Moses to take a census of the Israelite men age 20 years and up, "all those in Israel who are able to bear arms." The heads of each of the tribes or army divisions are named.

In the second reading, the census showed the following populations by tribe:

totaling 603,550 in all. God told Moses not to enroll the Levites, but to put them in charge of carrying, assembling, tending to, and guarding the Tabernacle and its furnishings. Any outsider who encroached on the Tabernacle was to be put to death.

In the third reading, God told Moses that the Israelites were to encamp by tribe as follows:

In the fourth reading, God instructed Moses to place the Levites in attendance upon Aaron to serve him and the priests. God took the Levites in place of all the firstborn among the Israelites, whom God consecrated when God killed the firstborn in Egypt.

In the fifth reading, God then told Moses to record by ancestral house and by clan the Levite men from the age of one month up, and he did so. The Levites divided by their ancestral houses, based on the sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.