I saw a post on Facebook not long ago of someone who experienced great joy listening to the song The Blessing. They then prayed and gave thanks for their adopted kids.
Back in 2023 I wrote a small bit about this song, buried in a post on the difficulties worshipping in grief. I wrote,
This beautiful song has a section:
May His favor be upon you
And a thousand generations
And your family and your children
And their children, and their children
My generations have been cut off. This song makes me feel like His favor is not on me. I just cannot sing this. The pain is too deep.
Readers see less than half of what I write. Most topics come from an idea folder, like the post in 2023. The sketch of this topic was much more brutal than the post. You still only get the top bits,
The blessing in Numbers 6:24-26 has been hard to hear since 1991 and extremely difficult to hear since about 2002. Thirty years of cringing at the blessing because I do not feel it nor see it nor have peace. The Blessing song we sung today is even harder to hear. “May His favor be upon you… and your family and your children… He is with you… He is for you.” No, I do not see this at all. Was His favor on my kids by taking them away from me? Is it so bad here with me it was better to take Alex, Emily, and Caleb away? Other bad parents get visitation rights. I do not. I do not see Him with me nor for me. Thirty years I have been made to live in this agony. The only thing that goes for me is work, but only enough to pay bills and very little more.
Much further down the page, in response to someone telling me to “Release” this to God,
I am very afraid to “Release” this time. Every time I have, something much worse has happened. If I start to release these problems to Him, will Madi die? Or maybe only a house fire? What should I expect instead? Every time I go up to my father with my brokenness, He smacks my head with a favorite thing, breaking it in the process. And then it repeats every couple years for thirty years. Should I expect different?
These very different emotional responses, mine and my friend’s, I now believe are opposite ends of the same wrong interpretation. I have been studying God’s covenant and the study has radically shifted my beliefs to be more aligned with the early church fathers. In my studies I have encountered some references to Numbers 6 but I have avoided them. Their synopsis of it was not necessary for the topic I was studying, mostly because I avoid it to keep the emotional state from interfering with study.
After reading this Facebook post again, my mind started tapping me and saying, “Hey, something’s off. You know it’s been off a long time and now you know why.”
People who rejoice in the blessing and pray over their kids and generations expect an earthly generational outcome. People who dislike it because of their earthly generational outcome are looking at the same thing from a different angle. This passage has nothing to do with earthly generational outcomes.
While I knew this passage leaned towards Christ, it has become so diluted by nearly 200 years of Dispensationalism being taught from the pulpits in direct opposition to the 2000 years that covenantal ideas have reigned. By watering down the covenant relationships, this greater meaning is lost on the masses. Couple this with the common benediction. Pulpits now send people out with “have a good week”. This places the focus of the benediction on self. Instead it should focus on the eternal: thankfulness we have a Savior, prayer for peace, and assurance that God works all things together for His good. When the congregation reads Numbers 6, or sings it, the self-focused reading is already the lens they are wearing.
My working interpretation and hers were similar but we have different responses based on personal context. This passage on surface reading is a formulaic priestly blessing, like a liturgy.
The priestly benediction is GOD blessing the people. The priests are only conduits. The substance of what’s being invoked in the blessing is keeping, grace, God’s face turned toward you (favor), and peace. This isn’t a set of Israel-specific perks. It’s God showing the promise of the covenant to His people. The priest is just the mouthpiece announcing it.
A deeper read shows the full covenant from Galatians 3 through the hinge in verse 27, “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.” It says the result is that God’s name gets put on the people. So the final cause of the whole benediction isn’t “your line flourishes.” It’s “my name rests on you.” That’s belonging, not breeding. Whose you are, not who comes after you.
What name is placed? Was it ever placed? Both are answered in the New Testament. Christ was given the name above every name (Phil 2:9). The disciples were marked with the triune name at baptism (Matt 28:19). When we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we are placed under the covenant protection and under His authority. This is a symbolic placement of His name upon us on Earth, but spiritually it is very real (Eph 1:13).
Galatians 3 says Jesus fulfilled the covenant. All of its promises belong to Him. If what the blessing implies is ‘keeping’, ‘grace’, ‘peace’, and ‘favor’, then the full meaning of the benediction was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This passage is not about my children, or God keeping people here, or blessing us in any way but through the grace given in Jesus Christ.
Christ’s claim does not pass down a bloodline. It supersedes generations. Each person must come to Him directly, by grace through faith. To say otherwise is heresy.
But generations did matter, in another way. Many passed between Numbers and the manger. The people who lived in them were saved by the same faith we are, only theirs looked forward to a Messiah who had not yet come. The thousand generations were never about my descendants. They were God’s faithfulness, holding steady across every one of them until it arrived in Christ.
His claim is the blessing.
My thoughts above are not completely gone. I struggle releasing things out of the very real fear of what I will lose next. My new belief in this ancient idea of covenant does not let me enjoy the song, but at least I understand what is correct about it and how the repeating “And your family and your children, and their children, and their children” is twisted.
If your line was broken, in part or whole, His blessing was never about your bloodline. It was about His.
The subject was always Him, never my genealogy.
Still Dead, Still Here: Long Grief After Suicide. More at StillDeadStillHere.com.
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