Numbers 20

PART FOURTH.

FROM KADESH TO THE LAND OF MOAB. CHAPTERS 20-34. [TIME, ONE YEAR.]

INTRODUCTORY.

The last note of time found the Israelites at Kadesh, in August of the second year of the Exode. In Deuteronomy 1:46, Moses says, “Ye abode in Kadesh many days.” This indefinite expression may signify many weeks, months, or years, but it does not warrant the assumption of an uninterrupted residence of the whole people during nearly thirty-eight years. See Deuteronomy 2:1, which indicates a southward march towards Ezion-geber, or Geber, near the northern end of the Gulf of Akabah, the eastern arm of the Red Sea, from which station, according to Numbers 33:36, they “pitched in the wilderness of Zin, which is Kadesh.” This gives a clew to the direction of their march in the first verse of this chapter. They no longer hoped to enter Canaan on the south, as at first, on account of the steep and lofty mountains difficult to pass over. They proposed a passage probably through Wady-el-Ghuwier, a pass in Mount Seir, to reach the plains of Moab. Failing to secure the right of way, they moved southward again and passed round the southern end of Mount Seir, and then journeyed to Moab. All that is known of their history during nearly thirty-eight years is found in chap. 15-19, together with a list of sixteen encampments in Numbers 33:19-34. They probably, at the first, abode at Kadesh. We can assign no other reason for this wide gap in the history than the fact that there was little worthy of record while the adults were under a curse and were sowing the desert with their bones. It is sup-posed by some that the Divine Oracle was silent during this long interval, and that Jehovah made no communications to Israel while under the ban. But we find a few such communications in chaps. 15-19, probably made soon after the oath of exclusion from Canaan. Moses, in the meantime, must have enjoyed an assurance of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to have enabled him to write the first three books of the Torah and a portion of the fourth. The Israelites were doubtless scattered over the whole Sinaitic peninsula, wherever the wadies afforded pasturage, and only a skeleton of the army remained to guard the sanctuary. To prevent the decay of national feeling and the disintegration of the people in their long and wide separation, Kurtz suggests that the scattered parties were successively visited by Moses and the tabernacle. “Hence the stations named in Numbers 33:19-36, must be regarded in the light of a circuit which was made through the wilderness by Moses and the tabernacle.” This chapter contains the account of Miriam’s death and burial at Kadesh; an outburst of popular indignation against Moses because of the lack of water; the smiting of the rock by Moses, whose conduct on that occasion was not blameless; the request for a passage through Edom and the refusal; the journey to Mount Hor, up whose ascent Moses, Aaron, and Eleazar climbed, in view of all the camp, to find a deathbed for the first high priest, and an induction into office for the second. The death of Aaron is followed by thirty days’ mourning by the Israelites.

CONCLUDING NOTES.

(1.) In Deuteronomy 10:6, Aaron is said to have died in Mosera, but in this chapter and in Numbers 33:38, he is said to have died on the top of Mount Hor. These statements are easily harmonized on the supposition that the encampment at the base of the mountain in the Arabah was at a place called Mosera. Professor J.L. Porter thinks that this was the general name of the district in which Mount Hor is situated.

(2.) “The failure of faith on the part of Moses consisted in his treating as something between himself and Israel that which should have been viewed simply in connexion with the relation between Israel and God. How differently had it been the former time in Kadesh, when on the occasion of Israel’s murmuring he and Aaron had fallen on their faces in prayer before all the congregation! Numbers 14:5. As we consider it, every thing accords with the view we have taken of Moses’s conduct and unbelief. That Aaron shared in it appears clearly implied in Numbers 20:10. It was not so much any one special thing which was the ground of offence, as the whole bearing of Moses and Aaron, which showed itself equally in the words which were spoken and the twofold striking of the rock. The controversy seemed to be between Moses and Israel; the vindication sought was his, and so was the act by which it was to be obtained. And yet it had been in obedience to God’s direction that Moses had taken the rod, and with it smitten the rock. And so it appears that we may do an act of faith unbelievingly, and obey God in a disobedient manner. For, however important the outward deed, its moral character depends on its relation to that which is within.” Edersheim.

(3.) The first sojourn at Kadesh was for the trial of the people; the second was for the trial of the leaders, in which it was found that “eighty years of faithful service are not sufficient to procure the condonation of one moment’s impatience. Is not that harsh measure? But a tiny blade above ground may indicate the presence of a poisonous root, needing drastic measures for its extirpation; and the sentence was not only punishment for a sin, but kind though punitive relief from an office for which Moses had no longer, in full measure, his old qualifications. The subsequent history does not show any withdrawal of God’s favour from him, and certainly it would be no very sore sorrow to be freed from the heavy load carried so long. There is disapprobation, no doubt, in God’s sentence; but it treats the conduct of Moses rather as a symptom of lessened fitness for his heavy responsibility than as sin; and there is as much kindness as condemnation in saying to the wearied veteran, who has stood at his post so long, and has taken up arms once more, ‘You have done enough. You are not what you were. Other hands must hold the leader’s staff. Enter into rest.’ He has no longer the invincible patience, the utter self-oblivion, the readiness for self-sacrifice which had borne him up of old, and so he fails. We may learn from his failure that the prime requisite for doing God’s work is love which cannot be moved to anger nor stirred to self-assertion, but meets and conquers murmuring and rebellion by patient holding forth of God’s gift, and is, in some faint degree, an echo of his endless longsuffering. He who would serve men must, sleeping or waking, carry them in his heart, and pity their sin. They who would represent God to men and win men for God, must be ‘imitators of God,… and walk in love.’ If the bearer of the water of life offers it with, ‘Hear, ye rebels,’ it will flow untasted.” Edersheim.