The Aftermath - Numbers 14

Chapter 13 ended with 10 of the 12 scouts reporting back to the people that taking over the land of Canaan would be impossible and suicidal to attempt and chapter 14 is wild. Even though Caleb and then Joshua both report to the people that Canaan can be taken with help from God, the people don’t want to hear the good news and “lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.” The people turn against Moses and Aaron and start saying things like, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness!” They wished that they had never been taken out of Egypt because they believed that if they went to war against the inhabitants of Canaan, “our wives and our children should be a prey.”

To be fair, it is kind of daunting to face combat knowing that if you lose your family will be enslaved and murdered, so I get that, no matter how much faith someone has, that reality is still there. But these people took it beyond just being nervous, they would not listen to Moses, Aaron, Caleb, or Joshua who told them that “if the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.” They are begging the people not to rebel against the Lord.

The people not only complained against the plan, they started collecting rocks so that they could stone Moses, Aaron, Caleb, and Joshua to death. My theory is that a people is ripe for destruction when they start killing the prophets, and it sure looks to me like they are getting ready to kill these prophets.

God is furious. He comes to Moses and tells him that he’s going to kill these disobedient people and start over with Moses himself and make a righteous people. Moses begs God for the lives of these Israelites who are about to kill him using some interesting tactics. He says that if God kills all the Israelites, then all the gentile nations around them will know about it and believe that God is not strong enough to keep his own people in line and bring them to the promised land. Of course God knows that he is capable of bringing the Israelites into the promised land and I don’t think his reputation among gentile nations really matters to him that much but I think that it’s interesting that Moses used this logic trying to convince God to spare these people. He also reminded God of his “longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression.”

God agrees to spare the people right then but says that “all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers.” The cut off of those Israelites alive who will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land was 20 years old, and TB notes that this is because that’s the age of the army. The whole army refused to fight and so the whole army wouldn’t be allowed to enter the promised land. TB also points out that this demonstrates an important point about the nature of God, and honestly one that I’ve been struggling with my whole life. TB says “Mote this as well: Moses could sway the Father… This means that God is interactive with those who He has set in charge of things. All things are not necessarily decided in advance. God may KNOW all things in advance, but His plans and intents can be altered and moved when certain righteous men approach Him and ask for mercy and grace… Your intercessory prayer counts, You can influence God… provided of course that what you ask is within His will. The good news is that we are not hapless Marionettes, being manipulated by the Creator, simply dancing to a long ago predetermined tune. Otherwise where is the ‘relationship’? When one is a robot and the other it’s operator there is no relationship. There must be a give and take, a meaningful communication between the two parties, in order for there to be a true relationship and I wish I had understood that when I was a much younger man.”

This was such an eye opening statement for me because It’s something that I have always struggled with, especially when it comes to prayer and fasting. I’ve always asked “if God has already determined the outcome then why does my asking or fasting for a certain outcome matter? God’s will is not changeable so why should I be hungry?” It’s also like “why don’t I just pray to accept God’s will instead of asking Him for certain blessings or outcomes?” It seems to me like that would be the most logical outcome, I can’t change his mind so just ask him to help me accept whatever it is he has planned, and this is all under the assumption that it’s all going to be bad and painful for me, so honestly It’s always just been “please help me accept my suffering” which is pretty bleak and has been very demoralizing to say the least. But this concept of being able to have some sort of say in the outcome is interesting. I wonder if it’s healthy for me to think this way because I’m very controlling and so I might just take this to be a way for me to try and control the outcome when maybe acceptance is best. I’m going to have to think about this for a while.

These 10 men who brought back the bad reports were struck immediately by a divine plague and died even though we aren’t told what exactly that plague was. When thinking about what Israel needed to be righteous, it definitely was not the leadership of these 10 men, and they were chosen because they were significant figureheads within their respective tribes. They would have sown discord and discontent throughout their tribes for the rest of their lives, so God decided to make the rest of their lives very short. I think it’s easy to look at these people and judge them for how much faith they lacked in God’s ability to save them and provide immeasurable blessings for them. I think “if I had seen the miracles that they had seen, then I would have been faithful,” but really haven’t I seen just as many miracles as them?

The IM says “they openly rejected the numerous evidences of God’s power that had been almost daily fare,” but don’t I experience daily evidences of God’s power in my life as well? Haven’t I been fed manna from heaven? I surely have had miraculous jobs opportunities that have fed my family, miraculously given education opportunities that allowed me to feed my family. Haven’t I had the constant cloud of God hovering over every aspect of my daily life? Hasn’t he manipulated time and space and people and opportunities to orchestrate a specific outcome that affects me and my family, even if I hate it at the time? Hasn’t he been so obvious with his hand controlling aspects of my life so that I would see that it was Him and calm down? I don’t know the end yet, but I have to trust that this is the way that He wants it specifically for whatever reason that I don’t understand. Have I not seen the miracles of God just as explicitly as they did? Therefore, my faith is sufficient to be obedient and to just chill out and trust Him.

I don’t know if it was a combination of the 10 negative scouts dying or God coming down and Moses begging for the lives of the people or the people genuinely being remorseful from their chewing out by God, but they are mournful afterward. Interestingly, their mournful state doesn’t translate into doing what God wants them to do, which is just be obedient to the commandments while they wander the desert for the next 40 years. No, what they decide to do to show God that they are repentant is to go to war against the Amalekites and the Canaanites that they were commanded to fight earlier and refused. They go to Moses and say “ok, now we’ll fight,” but Moses says “wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the Lord? But it shall not prosper.” He says, “no use fighting now, that time has past, God’s not going to help you, I’m not going with you and the ark or the covenant surely isn’t going with you.” They says “we don’t care, this is how we want to show God that we are sorry we didn’t listen the first time.” And guess what happens? They go to war against these people and they are beaten. It doesn’t quantify how badly they are beaten, but I’d imagine that it is pretty severely. Such a wild outcome to me, like doubling down on being disobedient to the cost of their own lives in brutal physical combat. Just wild.