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Numbers 11:16-35 God Provides for Moses; Gives the People Quail; and then Sends A Plague – What Gives?

Day 53 of social distancing. Although my wife noticed today that Toronto is (according to ads on the back of buses – yes, we did go out today – met a member of our small group in a parking lot) – using the phrase “physical distancing”. I guess that’s more the case, but it doesn’t change a thing. Also, today is Mother’s Day. Can you imagine how many mothers and grandmothers didn’t have the opportunity to hug their children and grandchildren because some politicians are pushing their authority to the limit. We also need to watch the efforts of some who would rather never have us re-open our churches again. So, they’re predicting they’ll keep churches closed until 2021. That’s right, and they’re being sued for it. But by the time the case runs the gamut of courts, it will be 2021. Will heads roll?  I doubt it.  On the other hand, there is nothing you and I can do about it.  Our guidance and direction and hope and peace and love come from above. So, hang in there.  We’ll keep studying the Word and finding more priceless gems. Moses had just finished complaining to God (see our last study) and it’s time for God to respond. Read on. 

The Passage

¹⁶ The Lord said to Moses: “Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you. ¹⁷ I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.

¹⁸ “Tell the people: ‘Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, when you will eat meat. The Lord heard you when you wailed, “If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt!” Now the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat it. ¹⁹ You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, ²⁰ but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it—because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’”

²¹ But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ ²² Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?”

²³ The Lord answered Moses, “Is the Lord’s arm too short? Now you will see whether or not what I say will come true for you.”

²⁴ So Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. He brought together seventy of their elders and had them stand around the tent. ²⁵ Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took some of the power of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied—but did not do so again.

²⁶ However, two men, whose names were Eldad and Medad, had remained in the camp. They were listed among the elders but did not go out to the tent. Yet the Spirit also rested on them, and they prophesied in the camp. ²⁷ A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

²⁸ Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses’ aide since youth, spoke up and said, “Moses, my lord, stop them!”

²⁹ But Moses replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” ³⁰ Then Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

³¹ Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea. It scattered them up to two cubits^[a] deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. ³² All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers.^[b] Then they spread them out all around the camp. ³³ But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the Lord burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague.³⁴ Therefore the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah,^[c] because there they buried the people who had craved other food.

³⁵ From Kibroth Hattaavah the people traveled to Hazeroth and stayed there.

Footnotes

1. Numbers 11:31 That is, about 3 feet or about 90 centimeters
2. Numbers 11:32 That is, possibly about 1 3/4 tons or about 1.6 metric tons
3. Numbers 11:34 Kibroth Hattaavah means graves of craving.

Thoughts on the Passage

God had heard Moses’ complaining. He asked Moses to get Him seventy (70) elders known for their leadership to meet in the tent of meeting. There God was going to transfer some of the power of the Spirit from Moses to them. This raises a question in my mind: Is the power of the Spirit a limited power, or did God mean something else when He uttered those words? Robert Jamieson suggests that the transfer of this power was not in quantity but rather in quality. Moses did not end up with any less of the Spirit, but the 70 leaders got have the Spirit in some of the same ways that Moses had Him.

These 70 were to stand with Moses in the tent of meeting and God would ‘come down’ and speak not with them, but with Moses. Once the transfer of the power of the Spirit was complete, the idea was that these 70 would share the burden of the people with Moses, so that he would not have to carry it alone.

Verse 18 tells us that God told Moses to tell the ‘people’ (not just the 70) to consecrate themselves for on the morrow they would have ‘meat’ (which they craved) to eat. And that they’d eat if for a whole month until they were sick of it because they “rejected the Lord” and rued the day they left Egypt and the slavery they were bond by.

In verse 21, Moses responds and says, basically, “Come on, God; there’s no way you can provide that much meat.” And God challenges him to wait and see. (At this point, if I were God, I would be not only mad at the people still, but now also furious at Moses.) Moses, how big is your God? Reader, how big is your God? When God tells us He will do something, let’s not question His method.

Moses goes and tells the people. He brings 70 elders to the tent. God does what He said He would do (He always does). And lo and behold, when the Spirit “rested on them, they prophesized” but only then and not again.  At least two questions arise: what did they prophesy? Chuck Smith says that prophesy is not always predictive – sometimes it is simply speaking out the Word of the Lord. And why never again? (Now that one I cannot answer. Feel free to answer it in the comments section.)

From here, the story takes a twist. Two men, Eldad and Medad, who were among the elders (not sure if they were part of the 70 or additional elders) stayed in the camp. I would assume the former as the text says the Spirit also rested on them, and they started prophesying.  Clearly the Lord’s Spirit is not limited by geography. Anyway, someone ran and told Moses and they wanted Moses to stop them. Notice that we are told (in verse 28) that it was Joshua the son Nun [yes, the very Joshua who went on to become leader after Moses] that wanted these two stopped. He was likely one of the 70 himself. But Matthew Henry believes they did this from a positive, though human, perspective – trying to assure the unity of the leaders and how they were to behave. We need to be careful that we do not put all leaders that God has called into the same mold. He may have different means of engaging them and for different purposes. One only has to look at how Jesus selected His disciples.

Moses would have none of it as he felt the more that would assist him in his work, the better, and in fact, wished that this would have happened to more than the 70. Matthew Henry suggests that they didn’t come to the tent, not because they were rebels (or else the Spirit of the Lord would not have fallen on them) but rather either because they did not get the message for some or reason or out of humility. Interesting thoughts.

And then things change once more as a “wind went out from the Lord” that brought quail to the camp from the sea. So much quail that it covered the ground at a depth of 3 feet or 90 centimeters and spread out as far as a day’s walk from all directions from the center of the camp. “Hey, Moses, did you really think that God’s arm was too short?”  And the people collected quail for two days straight – each one (or family) getting not less than 1 ¾ tons or 1.6 metric tons. [Moses, reader – how big is your God?]

Henry wants to observe the three aspects of what happened:
1. The people were gratified with flesh in abundance.
2. The people were so greedy of this flesh that God had sent them.
3. The people that were greedy paid dearly for their feast when it came time of reckoning.

David Guzik says, “When we allow ungodly cravings to rule our lives, God may send what we crave – and leannessinto our soul as well. Better to have a ‘fat’ soul and be deprived those cravings!”

And I guess that made God even angrier still, so much so that He sent them a severe plague. Let me share with you an example from my own life that I believe may be helpful here. I love shrimp and clams. It is very rare for me to eat them in Toronto. But when we visit our oldest daughter’s family in South Carolina – I know I will have shrimp and clams any time I want them. And in fact, regrettably, and sinfully, I ‘pig out’ on them. But boy do I pay the price at night because my stomach is just not used to that kind of diet. No multiply that many times and you get the plague (even to death) of the greedy Israelites who pigged out on quail.  [And by the way, quail is one of the tastiest fowls I have eaten. If you haven’t tried it, you should when you get a chance.]

However, we can’t miss the main point here in our passage. Many who had craved meat died and were buried right there and the place was called Kibroth Hattaavah which means “graves of craving”. Smith calls this a “grave of lust” and says many people get buried in their grave of lust. I am reminded of the old poster I had framed when I was away in graduate school. This is what it said:

Reader, what is the chance that you and I might end up dying in our grave of craving or grave of lust? 

Once things settled down, God moved them from there to Hazeroth. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of the Israelites in the Desert. And hopefully, we’ve learned something from the grumblings of both the Israelites and Moses.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

The Common Thread in “Lust, Fear, & Pride”

During a recent week in Toronto I had the opportunity to follow two significant stories on the news.  One story was from the United States, the other from Canada.  The former was about the trial of former U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards’ with respect to his possible misuse of campaign funds to support his mistress.  The second story was home-grown right here in Toronto and it had to do with the fact that some judges were finding far too many municipal and provincial police officers were lying in their testimonies in a desperate attempt to convict suspects.

In the same week, I attended a Pops Series concert of the Toronto Symphony where the theme was famous Sci-Fi Music and the guest host was none other than George Takei about whom the program said, “known around the world for his founding role in the acclaimed television series Star Trek, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise.”  Takei took the opportunity, at least for his solo parts of the concert, to tell us that all the good things the producer of Star Trek had in mind when he produced the show many decades ago were indeed coming true and the world is a much more wonderful place to live in now than it was back in the days the first time the good ship Enterprise cruised the universe.

For some crazy reason, perhaps understood only by those that understand how my mind works, I started reconsidering all three of these stories, both individually and as a group, by the end of the week.  I discovered something that all three had in common.  I noticed that each story was really about hiding the truth and furthermore, about propagating a lie.  Let me explain the observation in each case.

The story of the downfall of John Edwards involved lying at the personal level.  Not only did Edwards lie to his wife and others, but also individuals in his employ or circle of friends lied in order to perpetuate the likelihood of his lies being believed.  First, we have the lie that his campaign aide, Andrew Young, told in which he claimed he was the father of the baby that Edwards had with his mistress, Rielle Hunter, in order to protect Edwards.  Then we have the lie that the aide’s wife, Cheri Andrew, agreed to when she let her husband say that.  According to her, Edwards had said that if they didn’t go along with this lie, his campaign would die, and his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, would find out about his affair.  And of course, the mistress agreed to the lie as well.  You can’t easily come up with this kind of stuff in Hollywood, unless you are Woody Allen or Steve Martin, but in real life, it finds you.  Wonderful.

Before we examine the cause of the various lying, let’s take a look at our second story – the case of too many police officers lying on the stand.  While each police office who lies during a court case does so as an individual, the fact is that there is often solidarity and supporting lies required not only by one’s police partner, but the whole division, and ultimately the entire force, in some cases.  Police officers bond together better than any Bull-Grip glue you can find at Home Depot.  This often occurs for some good reason, but almost always with some very good results, for them.  Not so the case for the poor sucker who is the butt of the lying.  In this particular story, the Toronto Star newspaper had identified at least 100 cases of police deception.  The paper also discovered that while judges may note such findings and even comment on them, they are powerless to do anything about them under current legislation.  Go figure.  For some reason perjury it seems does not apply to law enforcement officers.  The research discovered cases where officers had lied, misled the court, or fabricated evidence.  In many of those cases, the judges tossed out the evidence against the accused, and they walked free.  If they were guilty, certainly justice, any victims, and society as a whole, were not served.  You may want to think that it serves the police right for the dishonest role they may have played, but before we jump to that conclusion, we need to also remember that some of those who ‘walked’ in these cases were possessors of child pornography, a major ecstasy drug manufacturer operating out of a residence, and drug dealers carrying loaded handguns.  To make matters worse, probably because of the solidarity of those in the forces, most officers caught being dishonest are not dealt with at all.  Clearly, there ought to be another approach.

When the paper first gave rise to the issue, the Toronto police spokesperson sent a rather strong letter to the paper criticizing it for not ‘understanding’ certain things or caring enough to help readers ‘understand’ the situation.  Really.  Then a few days later, the president of the Toronto Police Association (read ‘union’) wrote an opinion article in the same paper explaining how the coverage “oversimplified the facts”.  The author claims that the 100 cases the paper identified was nothing compared to the 1.5 million cases heard across Canada in the same period of time.  Mike McCormack had a good point.  We need to be careful that we don’t paint all our men and women in police uniforms as liars and deceivers.  They are not.  However, if my grandchild gets raped by a child molester; murdered by an armed dealer because he got in the way; or hit by a drunken driver, that was released because of just one police officer lying then, for me, that’s one officer too many lying.  And, it is rather odd that of those accused of lying, the number of officers found guilty by their own forces is almost zero.

The furor over this story ended recently when the Attorney General of Ontario agreed to probe the case of police officers “who are found by judges to have lied in court.”  I welcomed this and so did Police Association President McCormack – but perhaps for different reasons.

Sadly enough the controversy of whether or not police lie on the stand was also followed by another form of lying the police may be guilty of as a group.  For years, drivers swore that Toronto police officers worked on a quota when it came to giving out violation tickets to drivers.  The police and their employer denied it.  But lo and behold, in the same week, one leaked memo to officers of a large Toronto Division states they are “expected to write a book a day.”  A book is 25 tickets.  When questioned, the Deputy Police Chef said the memo used “inappropriate language” and “there’s no quota, just an expectation” to do what they are supposed to do, he argued.  Let’s get real for a moment.  In the service, when the ‘expectation’ comes from a superior officer and he also tells you that promotion is based partly on your record which includes doing your job in this area, then I submit to you, this ‘expectation’ is heard and read and obeyed as a ‘quota’.  If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it’s a duck.  Welcome to collective lying – a practice almost as old as the world’s oldest profession if not older, as I read ancient texts.

That now takes me briefly to my third story and its associated lies – the one that George Takei and other liberals promote constantly around the world, using their fame and fortune to do so.  It is what I call lying at the “global” level.  Politicians and activists are very good at this – think Al Gore and the millions he has made on the lie of global warming.  I am sure you can find other examples like the individuals who deny the holocaust ever happened.

According to his write-up, Takei was “unjustly” interned in two U.S. camps during WWII (those awful Americans), is a human rights and community activist, spokesman for the ‘Coming Out Project’ and he “currently lives in Los Angeles with his husband Brad Takei”.  Fine and dandy, Takei is free to be and do what he wants to be and do.  I mention this only to tell you what his philosophy of life and political ideology is like.  And they both affect his thinking as do mine affect my thinking, I admit. But if Takei thinks that mankind is much better off these days than we were half a century ago, I think he must have lost his reading glasses somewhere in outer space when he stepped outside the Enterprise for a stroll.  He is missing the hunger, the exploits, the illiteracy, the illnesses, the racism, and so much more that is not only still with us, but growing in the world.  And then when he and his buddies start to tell us that “man” can solve the world’s problems, you know he is, at best, deceiving himself.  One only needs to look at America, Europe, Africa, the Arab States, the Middle East, and many other places in 2012 to know there is not an iota of truth in that.  But good luck, George.

Okay, that’s three stories – all tied to lying, but at different levels.  Edwards at the personal level; the police at the group level or organizational level; and Takei and friends at the global level.  But what exactly causes these three levels of lying?  Is the cause one and the same for all three?  Are they different?  Well, yes and no.

When I am faced with such difficult questions, I have the privilege (and the blessing) of asking a very reliable source – my wife.  And that’s exactly what I did.

“Honey, when a person gets involved in extra-marital affairs, what, in your opinion, is the key driving cause?” I asked her.  “Lust!” she replied without any hesitation.  The cause of John Edwards’ lying was his affair, which in turn, was caused by lust.  He simply was not satisfied with the beautiful woman he had, who was the girl of his youth, who was the mother of his children, and the woman who right now needed him more than any other person in the world.  Instead, he lusted after another woman.  And now he had to lie about it to salvage a number of things and people – his wife being one of them.

“Honey, when a police officer lies on the stand and the whole force tends to support him afterwards, what causes that?” I continued my research.  “Fear!” she replied, again without any hesitation.  People lie in their work because they are afraid of failure.  Others lie with them because they fear the repercussions of having one in their ranks of failing or in this case, caught lying.

I was on a roll.  “Honey,” I tried once more, “when someone like George Takei lies publicly and globally about the state of the world today and about man’s likelihood of solving his own problems, what causes that?”  Again, no hesitation as she blurted out the answer, “Pride!”  Bingo!  She was right again I realized.  When man lies about the state of the world and the state of man’s future, it is his pride that actually blinds his minds’ eyes so that he cannot see his own shortcomings and thinks he can save himself, to the point where he may not even know he is lying.  He just is.

So, I thought, we lie alone in situations like extra-marital affairs and cheating on our spouses because of lust.  We lie alone and in groups because of fear.  We lie alone, in groups, and in global movements because of pride.  I repeated the findings to her.  She nodded.  Then she asked me a question.  “And dear, what do all these things – lust, fear, and pride, have in common?”  “SIN!” I replied.   “Bingo” she said.

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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