Sefer Bamidbar / Book of Numbers

“The fourth book of the Torah is known as ‘Numbers’ in English, because of the census recorded in the opening chapters. … Its proper Hebrew designation, from its first significant word, is B’midbar (In the Wilderness of), and it describes a people wandering through a spiritual as well as a geographic wilderness. …

“The generation of the wilderness dies off in the course of the 38 years covered by this book. At its conclusion, a new generation of Israelites who had never known slavery, a generation for whom the revelation at Sinai was tradition rather than personal experience, stands poised to enter the Promised Land.”

– Jacob Milgrom in the Etz Hayim