In this work Calum Carmichael - a legal scholar who applies a literary approach to the study of the Bible - shows how each law and each narrative in "Numbers", the least researched book in the Pentateuch, responds to problems arising in narrative incidents in "Genesis". The book continues Carmichael's process of demonstrating how every law in the Pentateuch is a response to a problem arising in a biblical narrative, not to an inferred societal situation.

Calum Carmichael is considered by many to be one of the most original voices in biblical studies today. He is professor of comparative literature and adjunct professor of law at Cornell University, and the author of Sex and Religion in the Bible.