| Part
of the difficulty a reader may have in approaching the book
of Numbers is trying to get a sense of where the book is
going. Many commentators have expressed difficulty in describing
the organisation of the book of Numbers. To them, it has
seemed that the book has just been thrown together, a random
collection of pieces of legislation and narrative put together
by a clumsy editor, what one commentator has called, 'the
junk room of the Old Testament.' Dentan says, '...the
book has no real unity and was not composed in accordance
with any logical, predetermined plan...whatever outline may
be imposed upon it will have to be recognised as largely
subjective and arbitrary.'
Commentators
recently have seen deficiencies with this view, and have
sought to understand the arrangement of material both theologically
and in the flow of the narrative on which it hangs. The suggested
outline below (taken from Dennis Olson, and similar in many
ways to that of Gordon Wenham) indicates this new approach,
and flows from a careful comparison of the various sections
of the book[1]. | 
