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The creation of the holy nation of Israel is a story told in three acts:
- Act I: the Exodus liberation and journey to Mt. Sinai
- Act II: the covenant ratification, the giving of the Law and the journey from Sinai to Kadesh-Barnea
- Act III: the birth of a new generation in the wilderness years and their preparation to conquer the Promised Land on the Plains of Moab
When the Israelites reached Kadesh-Barnea, at Yahweh's command Moses selected twelve tribal leaders to reconnoiter the land of Canaan. Among those men he selected Moses send Caleb, a Gentile convert who had become a leader in the tribe of Judah, and his own assistant, Hosea (Num 11:28), a leader in the tribe of Ephraim. Bishop Eusebius wrote that when Moses changed Hoshea's name to Joshua [Yehoshua, "Yahweh saves"], it was a significant moment (Num 13:16) because for the first time in salvation history Moses introduced the name "Jesus". Joshua was destined to lead the children of Israel into the Promised Land of Canaan, a foreshadowing of Jesus' mission to lead the children of God into the Promised Land of heaven.
Chapter 14
Chapter 14 is divided into four parts:
- Israel's rebellion (verses 1-9).
- God's anger and Moses' intercession (verses 10-19).
- Yahweh's judgment and the people's punishment (verses 20-38).
- The abortive attempt to conquer Canaan (verses 39-45).
Numbers 14:1-9 The Defiant Rebellion of the Israelites
Question: In Exodus 14:11 the Israelites had expressed the same fears and made the same unfounded claims against Yahweh, but what do they propose that they did not say in the earlier episode? What is the extent of their sin?
Answer: This time they defied Yahweh by threatening to made plans to return to Egypt and to appoint their own leader to take them back. It is a rebellion against God's plan for their destiny and a rejection of God's covenant mediator, Moses.
Only Moses, Aaron, Joshua and Caleb appear to recognize the dangerous position in which the Israelites have placed themselves. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces and Joshua and Caleb tear their clothing as a sign of their distress. Prostrating oneself is a sign of deference or submission to a superior power, like a king or ruler or a deity. Scripture records Moses and Aaron prostrated themselves before God when making supplications (Num 16:4, 22). However, it is unlikely this is the reason Moses and Aaron fell on their faces. It is more likely that such a display of outright rebellion against God made them expect an immediate outpouring of divine wrath, as in the case of the deaths of Aaron's two sons and they were getting out of the line of fire (Lev 10:1-2).
In an attempt to reason with the out of control crowd, Joshua and Caleb courageously stood up to the people. They extolled the bounty of the land they had reconnoitered and reminded the people of Yahweh's promises to them.
Question: Caleb and Joshua attempted to calm the people's fears and to rally the people to their side, what three reasons did they give for not rebelling against God's plan for them to conquer the land of Canaan?
Answer:
- We shall be victorious.
- Their enemies' pagan gods cannot protect them*.
- We have Yahweh on our side.
*"protecting shade" refers to the regional pagan gods who have no power over Yahweh.
Numbers 14:10-19 Yahweh's Anger and Moses' Intercession
Question: How did Yahweh intervene to save the lives of His four faithful servants: Moses, Aaron, Joshua and Caleb, before the people carried out their desire to kill them?
Answer: God revealed His glory to the entire assembly within the confines of the holy Sanctuary.
The people were used to seeing God's presence in the Glory Cloud ahead of them on the march and above the Tabernacle, but this manifestation must have been an even more powerful sign of His Divine Presence-perhaps it was like the day God reveled His glory to the entire community in Exodus 16:10 or similar to the Theophany at Mt. Sinai in Exodus 19:16-19 when thunder and lightening accompanied visual sign of the cloud and fire.
Question: Yahweh's anger with the Israelites recalls what other time that Yahweh threatened to destroy the ungrateful and rebellious Israelites and to build a nation from Moses' descendants? See Exodus 32:7-10.
Answer: During the Golden Calf rebellion God made the same threats and the same offer to Moses.
Numbers 14:20-38 Yahweh's Forgiveness and Israel's Penance
Question: What did the Israelites say in 13:31-14:4 that became the essence of Yahweh's judgment against them in 14:28-35?
Answer:
| The Israelite's Complaints | Yahweh's Judgment |
| Would to God we had died in Egypt, or even that we had died in this desert! (14:2b) | In this desert your dead bodies will fall, all you who were counted in the census, from the age of twenty years and over who have muttered against me. |
| We cannot attack these people; they are stronger than we are (13:31). | I swear none of you will enter the country where I swore most solemnly to settle you ... (14:30) |
| And they began disparaging the country they had reconnoitered to the Israelites, saying, 'The country we have been to reconnoiter is a country that devours its inhabitants (13:32). Why had Yahweh brought us to this country, for us to perish by the sword and our wives and children to be seized as booty (14:3)? | Your children, who you said would be seized as booty, will be the ones whom I shall bring in so that they get to know the country you disdained, but, as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this desert and your children will be nomads in the desert for forty years, bearing the consequences of your faithlessness, until the last one of you lies dead in the desert (14:31-33) |
| And they said to one another, 'Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt' (14:4). | In this desert, to the last man, they shall die (14:35b). |
| Michal E. Hunt © 2010 | |
The two men, Caleb and Joshua who had valiantly stood against ten of their kinsmen, will become the leaders of the renewed generation. They were the righteous minority-the "faithful remnant" of the twelve representatives of Israel. The theme of the "faithful remnant" is a major Biblical theme that will be repeated throughout salvation history.
Question: What was God's judgment for the actions of these two groups of men: the two faithful leaders and the ten faithless leaders?
Answer: Of the Exodus generation, only Joshua and Caleb will survive to receive God's promise of possessing of the Promised Land. The other ten men were struck dead in the presence of the community.
Numbers 14:39-45 The Israelites' Attempt to Conquer Canaan without Yahweh
Question: What was Yahweh's judgment against the adults of the Exodus generation for their rebellion and rejection of their divinely appointed leader and God's covenant mediator, Moses?
Answer: The male adults of the Exodus generation were to wander homeless in the desert until they died.
God's judgment led to the people's grief over the verdict. Their grief, unfortunately, did not lead to humble submission and contrition but instead caused a complete turning to the opposite extreme.
Question: What did the people decide to do despite Moses' warning? See 14:42-45.
Answer: Instead of their grief leading to repentance, their grief produced presumption and their presumption produced a fatal rashness in thinking they could avoid God's judgment for their sin by conquer their enemies on their own.
God's just punishment for their sin of rebellion was meant to call them to repentance, but like Cain in Genesis 4:5-7 they rejected Yahweh's divine correction and fell deeper into sin in presuming to take on the Canaanites without God's help.
Question: What was the result of the Israelite invasion of Canaan?
Answer: The Israelites were defeated.
The Canaanites drove the Israelites all the way back to a site named in this passage as Hormah, which in Hebrew means "destruction." It is probably Tell el-Meshash, a site east of Beersheba and forty-seven miles (75 km) north of Kadesh on the edge of the central mountain ridge that runs the down the middle of Canaan.
Question: What is the message of their failure for us?
Answer: Without faith in God and obedience to His commands we cannot fulfill the destiny God has planned for us on their own, nor can we escape God's divine judgment and our personal accountability for the sins we have committed.
The rebellious adult generation of the Exodus will perish in the desert, just as they wished in Numbers 14:2.
Chapter 12: The Deuteronomic Code
The Deuteronomic Code proclaimed on the Plains of Moab is the longest code of laws proclaimed in the Bible.
Question: What does this code of laws have in common with the others? How is it different? See Ex 20:22; Lev 17:1; Dt 1:3; 12:1.
Answer: Like the other codes, the commandments contained in this series of laws was also given to Moses by Yahweh and then proclaimed by Moses to the people. It is also an extension of the laws proclaimed in the Ten Commandments, but it is different in that the laws pertain to life in the Promised Land and not life in the wilderness.
Deuteronomy 12:1-12
God's Holy Shrine is Limited to One Place and One Sacred Altar
The Deuteronomic Code contains laws that will be necessary for Israel to live in harmony with God in the Promised Land.
Question: What are the Israelites commanded to do with pagan religious sites and why?
Answer: The Israelites must not be drawn to sites of pagan worship but must completely destroy all pagan sites and their cultic symbols.
Question: What is the central theme of this passage?
Answer: Yahweh's Sanctuary is the only place for right worship and the Israelites are to bring their sacrifices and communion offerings only to Yahweh's shrine.
Jerusalem is the site that Yahweh refers to in the passage in Deuteronomy 12.
Question: What is the significance of God's message that the selection of the site for His Sanctuary will be a place where His "name" will dwell among the tribes of Israel? How was Yahweh's Sanctuary unlike the shrines of pagan gods?
Answer: Unlike pagan gods whose images dwelled in their sacred shrines, Yahweh cannot be confined to a building. It is the liturgy of His people that must be confined to only one shrine. Yahweh will not dwell in the shrine in a literal anthropomorphic sense, but that His "name" dwells there means His essence, nature, and divine will is manifested there.
Even when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587/86 BC, the spot where the Temple stood retained its sanctity. During the Babylonian exile, the prophet Daniel and the other exiles remembered the Tamid sacrifice that took place twice daily in the Temple liturgy through their daily prayers that were offered to coincided with the times the Tamid lamb was offered in sacrifice for the covenant people by praying in the direction of Jerusalem and then a third time at night before retiring (Dan 6:11; 9:20-21).
Deuteronomy 12:13-22 Sacrificial Regulations
Verses 13-16 introduce two important distinctions in Israelite worship, both of which are revolutionary-for Israel and for the times.
Question: What is the prohibition in verses 13-14?
Answer: Legitimate sacrifice to Yahweh can only be practiced at His holy Sanctuary at Yahweh's one altar of sacrifice and at no other site.
Question: What is the other unique requirement in verses 14-16?
Answer: There is a distinction between the ritual sacrifice of animals at God's altar and the secular slaughter of domestic animals for food.
"Clean" and "unclean" are categories that do not refer to cleanness but to ritual purity according to the Law (see Lev chapters 11-15 and Num chapter 19). Those who were ritually unclean were not permitted to eat what was holy in the communion sacrifices (Lev 7:19-21). However, even when animals were slaughtered secularly, eating raw meat and drinking blood was prohibited; therefore, the blood had to be thoroughly drained from the animal.
Deuteronomy 12:23-28 Additional Warnings Concerning the Blood Prohibition
The permission to slaughter animals for food is presented in a new light, however, by explaining it as a necessary consequence of the Israelites spreading out across the Promised Land to establish their settlements. There are a number of repetitions in chapter 12. Repetitions in Scripture are like underlining for emphasis. Verse 27 makes a distinction between whole burnt offerings that are completely consumed on the altar fire with the blood of the animal splashed around the altar and communion offerings where the fat of the animal is burned on the altar and the blood of the animal is sprinkled around the altar but the meat God shares with the offered in a communion meal.
Question: What was the penalty for violating the covenant prohibition against eating raw flesh or drinking blood? Did this penalty only apply to Israelites? See Lev 17:14.
Answer: The penalty was excommunication from the covenant community, even for resident aliens living among the Israelites.
Question: Keeping this covenant prohibition in mind, what caused many Jews to be upset, even causing many of Jesus' disciples to leave Him, when He announced in the "Bread of Life Discourse" that in order to have eternal life one must eat His flesh and drink His blood? See Jn 6:53-62, 66.
Answer: What Jesus was requiring would cause them to be excommunicated from the Sinai Covenant. They were horrified by His statements.
Question: Did Jesus mean for the Old Covenant people to leave the bond of the Sinai Covenant? Was He speaking symbolically or literally about His Body and Blood?
Answer: Yes, the offering of His glorified Body and Blood in the New Covenant sacrament of the Eucharist was meant to bring them away from what was good in the Old Covenant into what was better and eternal in the New. He could not have been speaking symbolically. The Jewish crowd certainly did not think He was speaking symbolically, and when they left Jesus did not stop them. If He was speaking symbolically and let them go away believing that He literally meant what He said, then Jesus would be perpetrating a lie-a sin, and Jesus was incapable of sinning.
Since Jesus was incapable of lying, He must have been speaking literally because He let them go and then challenged the Apostles as to what they believed He meant. Jesus was not speaking of His physical/human flesh and blood but of His glorified body and blood that the Spirit of God was going to transform into the Sacrament of the Eucharist (Jn 6:63).
Deuteronomy 12:29-31 Warning to Avoid Canaanite Cultic Practices and Worship sites
The warning not to inquire about pagan gods worshipped in the region was a necessary warning because of the customs of the times. In ancient times it was believed that certain gods inhabited certain regions. When the Assyrians exiled the ten Northern tribes of Israel into Assyrian lands to the east, they brought in five different pagan peoples to inhabit the vacated land of the Northern Kingdom (1 Kng 17:24). After experiencing attacks by wild animals, the people inquired about the gods the former inhabitants had worshipped (1 Kng 17:25-26). Discovering the Israelites had worshipped one god named Yahweh, the immigrants adopted Yahweh as one of their gods, believing that they would have protection in His land (2 Kng 17:27-34).
The Canaanites practiced child sacrifice. Children were burned alive in sacrifice to Baal by parents attempting to gain material blessings from the god. The reason for child sacrifice was self-interest, much like the reasons women and men abort children in modern society-sacrificing to the false gods of selfishness and materialism.
The limiting the worship of the Israelites (in the Bible, worship is defined as sacrifice) to one Sanctuary and one altar of sacrifice is one of the most unique aspects of the Sinai Covenant. Prior to the Sinai Covenant every father of every family functioned as a priest who established altars and worship wherever he felt called to offer sacrifice to Yahweh. All of that expression of religion changed at Sinai. Now, for the first time since the Garden of Eden there is one earthly Sanctuary where God communes with man and for the first time in the history of Yahweh's relationship with His covenant people, there is an ordained priesthood serving God and His people.
CHALLENGE: “Paul teaches we are saved by faith alone: ‘We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law’ (Rom. 3:28).”
DEFENSE: Paul says that we are justified by faith apart from “works of the law.” That’s not the same thing. Works of the law refer to acts undertaken to obey the Law of Moses, the fundamental law of Judaism. Thus, after saying we are justified apart from works of the law, Paul asks, “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?” (Rom. 3:29). He then refers to circumcision—the most famous requirement of the Law of Moses—saying God “will justify the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised through their faith” (Rom. 3:30).
Elsewhere, Paul raises the question of Jews and Gentiles and says that “a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16). Just before this, he referred to the Jerusalem council and noted his companion Titus was not required to undergo circumcision, though he was Greek (Gal. 2:1–10). This event is described in Acts. It occurred when “some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’ ” (Acts 15:1).
The resulting council reiterated that Gentile Christians did not need to be circumcised and become Jews. That’s what Paul is talking about in Romans and Galatians. He is stressing that you don’t have to be circumcised, become a Jew, and obey the Mosaic Law to be saved. Thus he says: “I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:3–6).
Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist
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