Catholic Daily Mass Take up and read
Search
The interpretation timeline

Num 2:33

How this passage has been read — the sources, oldest to newest.

From the early Church Fathers to now.

Num 2:33 · Douay-Rheims
“And the Levites were not numbered among the children of Israel: for so the Lord had commanded Moses.”
Patristic before A.D. 750
254
A.D.
Origen Patristic
c. A.D. 184–253
“We gather from the book of Numbers that there may be something greater than Israel too. For there the whole of Israel is numbered and reckoned in twelve tribes, as under a fixed number. But the tribe of Levi, being of greater eminence than the others, is accounted extra to this number and never thought of as being one of Israel's number [of twelve].”
Source
Modern · 1953 →

The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.