Most conspicuous of all is the repetition of God’s covenant name, Yahweh, which here, and six thousand more times in the Old Testament, is represented by “the LORD” in all caps in English. “The center and apex of God’s blessing is the presence and person of God himself.”
The number of Hebrew consonants steadily builds as well (by five), from fifteen to twenty to twenty-five. And also by two syllables (twelve in the first, then fourteen, then sixteen). Then line two is five (“the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you,” verse 25), and line three, seven (“the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace,” verse 26). The first line (“The Lord bless you and keep you,” verse 24) is three words in Hebrew. To begin with, the three lines of the blessing evidence careful, poetic crafting. Whether it’s new or old to you, consider what makes this blessing so great and why it assumed such a place in Israel - at the close of the morning service each day - and why it’s come to have such a place in the church age as well. In fact, some of us are so familiar with the blessing that it’s easy to take its content for granted, and miss what it really means.
Many Christians today are familiar with it from songs and benedictions in corporate worship that echo it still. Then follows what we now know as the great “Aaronic blessing,” not only one of Scripture’s best-known verses but also one of its oldest.
There God instructs Moses to speak to Aaron (his brother and Israel’s high priest) and his sons, saying, “Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them. Tucked away in an otherwise inconspicuous place, in Numbers chapter 6, we find one of the great poems in all the Bible. The Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
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