Patterning the 144,000

When Israel camps around the tabernacle at Sinai, Yahweh lays out a map for the tribes, the Levites and priests forming the inner cordon around the tent and the tribes arranged more distantly with groups of three at each point of the compass (Numbers 2). Each group has a lead tribe, and the whole arrangement looks like this:

East: Judah, with Issachar and Zebulun

South: Reuben, with Simeon and Gad

West: Ephraim, with Manasseh and Benjamin

North: Dan, with Asher and Naphtali

When the 144,000 are numbered in Revelation 7 (Revelation 7:4-8), they are listed in tribes, in this order: Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin. The principle ordering the tribal list isn’t birth order (Judah is listed first), and it’s not exactly based on the ordering of the Sinai camp (Levi has a place in the list, for instance, Revelation 12:7). There’s also the problem of a missing tribe (Dan). 

But the list is (at least) a riff on the wilderness arrangement. If we designate the tribes listed in Revelation 7 by their location in the camp, the first six tribes are arranged as follows (E, W, N, S designating directions of the compass):

E – S – S – N – N – W

There’s an obvious symmetry to the arrangement; the list ends at the opposite end of the camp from where it began. Besides the obvious, we can note that the list begins on the east and then  moves clockwise to the south, before crossing the center of the camp to the north and moving counterclockwise to the West. (In terms of the cherub faces, the sequence is Lion, Man, Eagle, Ox.)

The second six members of the list begin at the south and then follow the reverse order of the first six tribes. One exception is Levi (designated with an “X” below), which is not included among the tribes in Numbers because it forms an inner ring. The other change is that there is no northern tribe in the second half of the list (it would have been Dan). The second six tribes can be schematized this way:

S – X – E – E – W- W

In terms of cherub faces, the list is: Man, Lion, Ox. There is no eagle tribe.

The fact that the logic of the list of Revelation 7 is discernible gives us a setting in which to muse over the scene in that chapter. We are back in the wilderness, with tribes organized around the throne-ark (cf. 7:9, 15), marked on the forehead as a priestly people. The seventh seal reveals Israel entered into the Sabbath rest at Sinai.