I admit, it was boring - until the end

I am reading Numbers and the other night I read about Balaam (22-24). Last night I read chapters 25-26. And I have to admit, ch 26 is rather boring - with it’s counting up of all of Israel - until you get to the end. So I was reading it rather quickly then, when I got to v 63-65, I had to read those verses again. Wow! And here they are:

63 These are they that were numbered by Moses and Eleazar the priest, who numbered the children of Israel in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho. 
64 But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron the priest numbered, when they numbered the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. 
65 For the LORD had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.

At first I was confused. So I slowed down and read it more carefully. Do you see it? There are 40 years between verses 63 and 64. And somehow I missed it in my reading of Numbers. But that is not the Wow. That is in v 64. But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron the priest numbered, when they numbered the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. And 65 explains why. A second count of Israel of entirely different people!

And that goes along with what I read the night before in 23:19

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall and shall he not make it good?

God said that generation would not enter the promised land, and when they make a count just the other side of the Jordan, no one is left. No one. Wow!

When God makes a promise, He keeps it. Isn’t it neat to find a reminder of this in an otherwise uninteresting chapter? Such a powerful word, tucked away in a chapter devoted to the counting of Israel.