Reading Numbers

The Torah Portion this week is in Numbers, this week I have the Torah reading. It’s amazing how much counting there seems to be in the Bible. Last week all the men military age was counted this week seems to be the ones who work in the temple between 30 and 50 years old. 50 seems like a young cutoff age, most men I know who are 50 are still fairly strong and able body. Maybe back then 50 wasn’t like our fifty that we are used to, I can’t remember what the life expectancy was back then.
The only time in history recorded in the bible that counting the people was a good idea, was when G-d order them to do so, other wise it wasn’t pleasant at all and many innocent people died.
One thing I have always wondered is why count the people, because if G-d knows the number of hairs on our head he has to know the amount of people. I wonder if it was more for man that G-d did some of these things then for his ownself. I doubt he was trying to check his math because he wouldn’t need to that would be like running treadmills expecting to run to the beach it would make little sense. Now don’t get me wrong treadmills are great as long as you expect to get no where but burning calories.
I have admit the book of Numbers I have always found to be boring, and hard to read. The only reason why I been reading it is because I have too. I understand some of the Hebrew I am reading but I like to see how much I understand. Numbers I am not good at in the Hebrew language.
This portion seems to do more with the people who work in the temple, I am not exactly sure if they where priest or not or if they were simple people who worked to do some of the tasks, like cleaning, and organizing things.