Numbers 14:20-35 God Responds Again to the Grumbling and to Moses’ Plea
Day 60. It is a Sunday and as I have done for three weeks now (with my wife accompanying me for two) we met a friend at the parking lot of our church. The Associate pastor came out to say hello and we gave him our offering (saves the postage) and asked him to pray with us. We just don’t want to get too comfortably out of practice of going to church and we know the Enemy has that very thing in mind. But with no shopping to do today, the rest of the day has us staying in our homes or outside in our yards. I feel sorry for those that don’t have them although parks are now supposedly open. We press on. Last time, we studied how the Israelites once again grumbled against God and how Moses pleaded with God to forgive them. And now we study God’s response.
The Passage
20 So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; 21 but indeed, as I live, [i]all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. 22 Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, 23 shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. 24 But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, [j]I will bring into the land [k]which he entered, and his [l]descendants shall take possession of it. 25 Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys; turn tomorrow and set out to the wilderness by the way of the [m]Red Sea.”
26 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 27 “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are [n]making against Me. 28 Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you; 29 your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your [o]numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. 30 Surely you shall not come into the land in which I [p]swore to settle you, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. 31 Your children, however, whom you said would become a prey—I will bring them in, and they will know the land which you have rejected. 32 But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. 33 Your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, and they will [q]suffer for your [r]unfaithfulness, until your corpses [s]lie in the wilderness. 34 According to the number of days which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall bear your [t]guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know My opposition. 35 I, the Lord, have spoken, surely this I will do to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be destroyed, and there they will die.’”
Footnotes
i. and all
j. him I
k. where
l. seed
m. Sea of Reeds
n. Complaining
o. mustered
p. raised My hand
q. bear
r. fornications
s. are finished
t. or iniquities
Thoughts on the Passage
God right away responds to Moses and once again grants his prayer immediately. He pardons His people. What is key for us to note here is that the fervent prayer of those who love others is not wasted on God. Our prayers can and do make a difference – perhaps not always the way we want or to the degree that we want, but I believe God listens and consider our prayers, and where appropriate may ‘adjust’ (for lack of a better word) His judgment on those on whose behalf we are petitioning Him. God said He did this, the pardoning, “according to [Moses’] word”.
However, those who have seen God’s glory and signs, and were yet testing Him (the passage says “ten times” – really just means “many times”), or who spurned Him, were not to see the Promised Land. Those two verses of this 14th chapter – verses 22 and 23 are seen by many as the most key verses in the whole book. You can be pardoned by God, and all may not be lost – but you may not necessarily have the easiest of lives for the rest of your days. We must remember that sinning against God in this most blatant manner as carried out by the Israelites is not a small matter. There are still consequences to our sins. David Guzik has an interesting comment on this. He points out that we should remember how earlier they were saying, “Oh, if only we had died in this wilderness.” We studied that recently. Well, God, was going to grant the grumblers that wish or complaint as well. The alternative Matthew Henry points out is that God could have cut them off all at once (including the children) and disinherited them. One could almost say the Israelites got a deal that day.
Caleb, on the other hand, would see the land because of his different “spirit” and because he had followed God “fully”. And his descendants were also to benefit from that. Robert Jamieson says that Caleb was perhaps not named here because he was already not among the people that God wanted addressed as he was already assigned to be a constant attendant to Moses.
Is there something there for us? Caleb would see the Promised Land because of his heart and obedience, and so would his descendants. Is there a possibility that God might save our descendants simply because of our heart and obedience? But doesn’t the New Testament require each of us to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as savior on our own? It does. So, did something change between the two Testaments? I don’t think so. I think we need more study here. One possibility is that Canaan and heaven are not one and the same. So we can’t draw the same conclusion for who can get into heaven by looking at who God allowed to enter Canaan.
And God does not want to debate His decision with Moses, but simply told him that the Canaanites and Amalekites lived in the valley before them, and the next day he was to lead the people back to the wilderness by way of the Red Sea, and away from the land they were to have possessed.
Some English translations put this comment amount the Canaanites and Amalekites in parenthesis, as a secondary comment. It is not. This was central to the story. God did not want even these faithless and unprepared, spiritually and perhaps physically, people and their children to be slaughtered by those they feared. But would the people obey Moses instructions? (We’ll find out in our next study.) For now, we know that God had brought them to the borders or edges of the Promised Land – they could have possessed it, they could have taken it – with His help. But they lost their faith and they were disobedient. So, it was back to “boot camp” in the wilderness for more training that would allow, not them but their descendants, to take the land. Forty more years – what a price to pay for disobedience.
Then God addressed Moses and Aaron together. He asked them how long He was expected to put up with these ‘evil’ grumblers. He wanted Moses and Aaron to tell them that they would fall dead in the wilderness – every single one of those that grumbled and were over twenty years of age. Only Caleb and Joshua were going to make it to the land that God had promised. And here God next extends His goodness to their generations as well. They would see the Promised Land that their fathers rejected. And by the way, the Israelites were to be told that they were to spend forty years in the wilderness as shepherds suffering in life for the unfaithfulness of their fathers.
If you remember back to Numbers 14 and verse 3, the Israelites had accused God of not caring for their children and that He was gone to allow them to be murdered in the wilderness. Well, as Guzik points out, ironically, God was going to see that their children made it to the promised and that they, the parents, were going to die in the wilderness.
But did you notice that not even Moses or Aaron were excluded from those that would not make it? No sir. They didn’t make it for their own separate reasons as we’ll learn later. But even here, we can point out that Moses also played a part in God’s anger as he had agreed to sending spies to the land rather than trusting God and just going in and taking it.
In fact, God said that the number of years the Israelites had to spend in the desert were based on the number of days the spies spied out the land. During that period, they would bear their guilt and know His anger and opposition to their behavior. [The King James version says His “breach of promise” but I see it as a temporary breach of forty years.] So, God pronounced a verdict and He was going to carry it out -- death in the wilderness after a forty-year period of suffering. Wow. You see, God was not going to allow any “old man of disbelief” into His promised land. They had to die in the wilderness. Similarly, there is no room for those who are unbelievers in the Kingdom.
But perhaps there were other reasons why God sent them back into the wilderness for forty years. Henry suggests the following. First, that time was needed for another adult generation to grow up and be able to take the land in battle. Second, and perhaps more representative of the character of God was that now, in the wilderness, having understood their sin, having been forgiven, some of the grumblers could get their hearts and lives right before, and with, God. Henry says it this way:
“That hereby they might be brought to repentance, and find mercy with God in the other world, whatever became of them in this. Now they had time to bethink themselves, and to consider their ways.”
Once again, God shows us that “mercy there was great” in His dealings with His people. It reminds me of the that wonderful hymn, At Calvary by the Collingsworth family.
It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.
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