- The Book of Numbers (from Greek Ἀριθμοί, Arithmoi, lit. ’numbers’; Biblical Hebrew: בְּמִדְבַּר, Bəmīḏbar, lit. ‘In [the] desert’; Latin: Liber Numeri) is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final form is possibly due to a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a Yahwistic source made sometime in the early Persian period (5th century BC). The name of the book comes from the two censuses taken of the Israelites.
The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.
Paul Dirac on poetry