Original Meaning

PERSUADED BY THE NEGATIVE SCOUTS (13:31–33) that it is hopeless to attempt to conquer Canaan, the Israelites conclude that the Lord is their enemy and their best option is to mutiny against Moses and return to Egypt (14:3–4). With Moses and Aaron prostrate (14:5), apparently in a position of silent petition to God (cf. 16:4, 22, 45; 20:6), Joshua and Caleb take over the defense (14:6–9). Their argument that the “protection” (lit., “shadow/shade”; cf. Isa. 30:2–3)1 of the people of Canaan is gone may allude to God’s promise to Abraham: “In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (Gen. 15:16). If so, Joshua and Caleb are saying that God’s protective mercy on the inhabitants of the land (referred to as Amorites in Gen. 15) is finished and the time for Israel to receive Canaan has arrived.

Joshua and Caleb employ wise strategy. Motivational writers J. C. Maxwell and J. Dornan advise:

Some people are resilient and willing to keep trying in order to succeed, even when they don’t see immediate progress. But others aren’t that determined. Some will collapse at the first sign of trouble. To give them a push and inspire them, you need to keep showing your confidence in them, even when they’re making mistakes or doing poorly.2

Nevertheless, the two faithful scouts get nothing for their trouble except talk of stoning them, which likely threatens Moses and Aaron too (v. 10; cf. Ex. 17:4).3

The murderous threats transgress the bounds of tolerable free speech. Preempting their fulfillment, “the glory of the LORD appeared at the Tent of Meeting” (14:10b), undoubtedly turning rampaging rage into trembling terror. Although the mob constitutes the collective “defendant,” God says nothing to them (contrast 12:4–8). Rather, he addresses Moses to announce their sentence: death and replacement with a better nation descended from Moses (14:11–12).

Moses has heard the Lord talk like this before, after the golden calf fiasco (Ex. 32:9–10), but then he was alone on Mount Sinai. This time the high drama occurs while Moses is in the middle of the camp, likely in the outer sanctum of the tabernacle (cf. Num. 7:89),4 with people all around the sanctuary. He has been unable to speak up for himself, but now he finds his voice to plead for the lives of those who have heaped abominable abuse on him (14:13–19).

The Lord does indeed forgive (Qal of slḥ) the Israelites as Moses asks (14:20), namely, in the sense of preserving the corporate covenant relationship by not destroying all of them at once (14:15). However, merciful amnesty for the nation by no means rules out capital condemnation of a significant number of rebels, as God states in a formidable exception clause that he sets in concrete by swearing an oath (14:21).5 Moses has begged the Lord to pardon (Qal of ńsʾ ) his people (14:19), but on the way from Egypt they have tested (Piel of nsh) him “ten times” and spurned (Piel of nʾṣ) him. So the Lord swears by his life that the people (i.e., the adult generation) who have seen his glory, which fills the whole earth, will die in the desert without seeing the Promised Land (14:21–23; cf. Deut. 1:35).

Notice how sounds and meanings of words contribute pungent irony to conceptual contrasts in this passage. (1) Hebrew words containing n + sibilants link the positive benefit that Moses desires for the Israelites (pardon) to their history of negative response (testing, spurning), which makes them unworthy because they have already repeatedly repaid the Lord evil for good. (2) God’s life and the people’s vision are in contrast to their death without seeing. Rejection of the living deity whose glory they have beheld is rejection of life and land.

“Ten times” (Num. 14:22) appears to be idiomatic for “[too] many times” (cf. NJPS).6 Similarly, Jacob was fed up that Laban attempted to cheat him by changing his wages (lit.) “ten times” (Gen. 31:7, 41).7 Ironically, the Lord has graciously given the Israelites his glorious “Ten Words,” that is, the Ten Commandments (Ex. 34:28; Deut. 4:13; 10:4), but they have repaid him with ten tests of patience.

There is an exception to the exception: Although Caleb belongs to the condemned generation, he will permanently enter Canaan because he has completely followed (lit., “filled after”) the Lord (14:24). Later God also includes Joshua with Caleb (14:30).

Accepting the Israelites’ own decision to return toward Egypt rather than appropriate their own territory (14:3–4), the Lord orders them back into the desert along the way leading to the Red Sea (14:25). They refuse to live in the Promised Land, so they will suffer their just deserts by dying in the unpromising and uncompromising desert.

In his next divine speech, the Lord specifies how the adult generation will meet its demise (14:26–35). This speech is artistically constructed:

The LORD said [Piel of dbr] to Moses and Aaron: (v. 26)

“How long will this wicked community grumble against me? . . . (vv. 27–28)

In this desert your bodies will fall . . . (vv. 29–30)

As for your children that you said would be taken as plunder . . . (v. 31).

But you—your bodies will fall in this desert (v. 32).

Your children will be shepherds here for forty years . . . (v. 33).

For forty years—one year for each of the forty days . . . (v. 34)

I, the LORD, have spoken [Piel of dbr] . . . (v. 35)

To make the punishment fit the crime, the Lord will bring on the Israelites the very thing they wished for when they grumbled against him. Their corpses will fall in the desert (14:29; cf. v. 2), but not all at once, so that the Lord will accomplish his goal of purifying Israel without damaging his own reputation (see further below).

On Mount Moriah the “angel of the LORD” had called to Abraham from heaven (Gen. 22:16–18):

“I swear by myself, declares [neʾum] the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Now, because Abraham’s descendants have refused to obey and entrust the welfare of their children to him (cf. Num. 14:3), the Lord swears again, but this time the reverse: “As surely as I live, declares [neʾum] the LORD” (14:28), they will be decimated rather than multiplied and will not take possession of the promised cities and land of their enemies (14:29–35).8

Those who will die without seeing Canaan are the grumblers who were earlier included in the military census (men twenty years of age and older), not including the Levites (14:29). To be counted is to be accountable. The text does not specify the fate of adult women, but it appears that they are to die in the desert along with their husbands.9 Ironically, the children whom the men regarded as helpless (14:3) will be the only ones to survive (14:31). Nevertheless, for forty years they will bear (Qal of nśʾ ) the result of their parents’ unfaithfulness (lit., “immoralities”) to God by being shepherds in the desert rather than enjoying the Promised Land (14:33). They could plaintively query, as Benji Oliver did when his family’s house burned to the ground in St. Helena, California, on Christmas Day of 2001, “Are we homeless now?”

Like the Israelites’ punishment of exclusion from the land they have spurned, the duration of bearing (Qal of nśʾ ) their culpability (ʿawon) and experiencing the Lord’s hostility in the desert will exquisitely fit their crime: forty years, one year for each of the days that the scouts explored hostile territory (14:34; cf. 13:25). Thus the Lord answers his own question, “How long will this wicked community grumble against me?” (14:27).

Through a divine plague, the ten spies who were the catalyst for rebellious grumbling have the distinction of being the “firstfruits” of extinction (14:36–37). After mourning their fate (14:39), which kills any doubt as to the seriousness of the Lord’s intentions, the Israelites arise the next morning, confess their sin, and insist they are ready to go into Canaan (14:40).

Here is confession without repentance. Martin Luther accurately characterized repentance: “To do so no more is the truest repentance”10 (cf. Isa. 55:7). However, the Israelites are hardly turning from rebellion to cooperation with God. Before they were unwilling to go where he led. Now they want to go where he is no longer leading.

At least the Israelites vindicate God by admitting that he has been right and they have been wrong. However, their faithlessness has disqualified them, and they have lost their opportunity. Attempting to seize back the opportunity now would be another act of rebellion. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Thinking they have turned around, they are still on the road to failure, as Jason Kidd confidently put it when he was drafted to the Dallas Mavericks, “We’re going to turn this team around 360 degrees!”

The Israelites were afraid to enter Canaan with God on their side, but now they boldly go without him,11 as if they can do it by themselves. Here is a classic case of salvation by human works arrogantly attempting to take the place of salvation by grace through faith, as if human beings are greater than God. This isn’t courage; it is stupidity.

With their esprit de corpse (rather than esprit de corps), the Israelite soldiers already doomed to die in the desert only succeed in hastening their demise. Instead of enjoying a “mountaintop experience” in the hill country, they get themselves bashed in pieces (Hiphil of ktt) by the Amalekites and Canaanites all the way down to a place subsequently called Hormah (14:45). The place receives this name decades later when the Israelites devote (Hiphil of ḥrm) Arad to the Lord for total destruction (Num. 21:1–3). Thus, for an audience of a Torah reading, the ignominious Israelite retreat “to Hormah” likely evokes the idea that they are battered to destruction. If the people of the land fear the Israelites, who previously defeated Amalek (Ex. 17:8–16), their victory over Israel will give them confidence, making an Israelite conquest much more difficult.

Bridging Contexts

HOW TO FORGIVE a nation of rebels. On Mount Sinai, Moses effectively appealed to the Lord’s concern for his own reputation in the estimation of the Egyptians (Ex. 32:12). There he cited the Lord’s promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel/Jacob that their descendants would be numerous and inherit the land of Canaan (v. 32:13).

At Kadesh, Moses’ intercession follows a similar trajectory, but in expanded form and with even greater force. Again he mentions the Egyptians (Num. 14:13), but this time he also forecasts the inevitable attitude that those dwelling in Canaan will have when they hear that the Lord has slaughtered the Israelites: “The LORD was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath” (14:16). Thus Moses seeks to make the Israelites’ faithlessness less relevant: They are to be installed in Canaan to show that the Lord can do it after all.12

Having reminded the Lord of his need to demonstrate his power by acting on behalf of the Israelites, Moses appeals to a second aspect of God’s strength (koaḥ; 14:17; cf. Nah. 1:3), which should restrain him from acting against them: his mercifully patient love. Rather than citing any redeeming or redeemable quality of his miserable people, Moses clings to God’s own declaration of his character on Mount Sinai as the basis for hope (Num. 14:17–19; cf. Ex. 34:6–7). He concludes with the plea for God to forgive the Israelites’ culpability in accordance with the greatness of his love (ḥesed), as he pardoned them ever since they left Egypt (Num. 14:19). As when he interceded following the Israelites’ sin with the golden calf, “Moses’ insistence that God change was clearly based on his conviction as to what is unchangeable in God, namely his unwavering intention to save.”13

Here forgiving (Qal of slḥ) culpability (ʿawon) and pardoning (Qal of nśʾ; i.e., lit., bearing [understood ʿawon] for them) are functionally equivalent. In the sacrificial system, priests bear (Qal of nśʾ ) culpability (ʿawon) by eating purification offering meat (Lev. 10:17). In this way they participate in the process of reconciliation that the Lord completes when he forgives (Niphal of slḥ) faulty but nondefiant and repentant sinners (e.g., 4:20, 26, 31, 35). When the Lord bears culpability, however (Ex. 34:7; cf. Num. 14:19), this is not prerequisite to forgiveness. It is forgiveness, which implies that when he pardons, he bears some kind of cost.14

One obvious price of pardon is the Lord’s need to continue his relationship with faulty people (14:11–12, 19, 34). There is another price. By forgiving the Israelite nation on the corporate level in terms of continuing its existence (14:20), the Lord acts according to his mercy (Ex. 34:6–7a; Num. 14:18a). Consequently, however, he bears the problem that this very mercy can damage his reputation for justice (Ex. 34:7b; Num. 14:18b), because Israel includes sinners who will not submit to his sovereignty.

God’s solution is to purge the disloyal from Israel, thereby absolving his reputation of a cost of mercy (cf. comments on Lev. 16; 23:26–32). Thus his forgiveness does not include forgetting the wrong or erasing all of its consequences.15 He absolutely refuses to bestow the Promised Land on rebels, who will only use it to defame his Name.

The common denominator between forgiveness of the nation and punishment of rebels among them is the Lord’s concern for his reputation of mercy and justice. It is important to stress that the concept of God’s protecting or clearing his reputation has to do with the fact that he addresses real or potential human perceptions regarding him. This does not imply any actual defect in his character.16

A serving time. The Israelites have trouble walking with God. They tend to lag behind, rush ahead, or “bark up the wrong tree.” It takes time for God’s people to learn to stay with him. So he trains them for forty years by leading them around in the desert, away from distractions.

. . . in deserts people can hear and brood upon things not easily heard or thought about in busy cities, where people are usually busy, surrounded by noise, and steeped in self-importance. Sometimes in cities the shrillness of the public life is so great that the whispering voice of God cannot be heard.17

Another advantage of desert life is its requirement of dependence on God. Without his mercy, his people cannot survive there.18

Staying with the Israelites in the desert for forty long years is Caleb. During his life he does some heroic things, like standing up to the entire Israelite assembly at Kadesh (Num. 13:30; 14:6–9) and hounding the Hebron giants out of town when he is an old man (Judg. 1:20). Because he wholeheartedly follows the Lord (Num. 14:24), giants are his natural prey! However, I suggest that Caleb’s “finest hour” is his heroic wait of four decades.

Through their faithless folly, Caleb’s people have cheated him out of forty precious years of life in the Promised Land. Instead of enjoying the shade of his vine or fig tree while eating their fruit, he treks around the arid, trackless desert, going nowhere in particular, while his colleagues add to the dust one by one and Israel grows another army. Caleb doesn’t need decades of extra training; he is ready to roll. If anyone has a right to complain or contemplate military free-lancing, it is Caleb. However, rather than grumble or rumble off to conquer Canaan all by himself, this man of action patiently sticks it out with the Lord and his faulty people.

So what does Caleb do with the time he spends wandering in the desert? From the facts that the next generation is ready to enter Canaan and Othniel, his son-in-law later, emulates his exploits (Judg. 1:12–13; 3:9–10), we gain a strong impression that Caleb plays a key role in educating the next generation to do as he has done: wholeheartedly follow the Lord, expect great things, and trust God to provide. It is a time of serving, not just serving time.

Contemporary Significance

EPIDEMICS OF ATTITUDE. Just a short time before the scouts return to the main camp at Kadesh (from the root qdš, referring to holiness), the Israelites are a well-organized army of the Lord, cooperating together and bound for the Promised Land under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Now they turn into a mutinous mob, and even those they have honored and trusted turn on them. How can there be such a radical shift in the attitude of so many people, apparently all at once? M. Gladwell explains this as the “Tipping Point”:

These three characteristics—one, contagiousness; two, the fact that little causes can have big effects; and three, that change happens not gradually but at one dramatic moment—are the same three principles that define how measles moves through a grade-school classroom or the flu attacks every winter. Of the three, the third trait—the idea that epidemics can rise or fall in one dramatic moment—is the most important, because it is the principle that makes sense of the first two and that permits the greatest insight into why modern change happens the way it does. The name given to that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once is the Tipping Point.19

Just as modern fads sweep through society because people exert strong influence on each other, the negativity of naysaying Israelite scouts is wildly contagious to people who share a lack of adequate trust in God. A mere speech reporting powerful peoples, fortified cities, and giants (13:28–29) has an explosive effect, kindling a firestorm of fear and fury in one dramatic moment.

How do we protect ourselves and others from negative tipping points, such as giving in to temptation and strife, and promote positive ones, such as decisions to wholeheartedly follow the Lord? Here are a few tips:

• Foster a healthy influence on others, especially with regard to attitudes or attitude-shaping pieces of information that can be passed on without control from one person to another (e.g., avoiding gossip, slander, paranoia, or sensationalism).

• Critique influences on you, no matter how compelling they look. Don’t allow them to lead you to make damaging choices.

• Keep things in perspective and don’t run or jump just because all the other lemmings do.

• Be aware of spiritual, social, intellectual, and emotional environments that provide fertile ground for sudden change, whether for better or for worse.

• Maintain personal anchor points of faith and ethics to hang on to when everything else seems to be shifting fast.

When nothing is moving, let alone tipping in a positive direction, it is easy to tip into frustration. When we feel as though we are in a “holding pattern,” without signs of measurable progress, perhaps our situation is like Caleb’s prolonged desert experience. Rather than writing the time off as wasted, we can prepare for victory of biblical proportions by teaching precious people how to follow God all the way, in spite of distractions like giants, fortified obstacles, and other tribulations, to the place where “the Lamb . . . will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:17).20

Intercession. Does prayer on behalf of others make a difference? Is it “an activity that can initiate unilateral divine activity that would not have taken place if we had not utilized our God-given power of choice to request his assistance”?21 To cite a specific example, what would have happened if Moses had not interceded for the Israelites at Kadesh (Num. 14:13–19)?

The biblical text indicates that Moses’ prayer indeed made a profound difference. Just before his speech, the Lord expressed grim resolve to administer genocide (14:12). Immediately afterward, God was talking about forgiveness (14:20). Although he qualified this forgiveness by spelling out dire consequences for many, this was a far cry from his deadly intention to wipe out the entire nation.

Notice the delimitations of Moses’ petition. He did not ask God to coerce the Israelites by converting them against their will. What he requested was for the Israelite nation to continue and so have further opportunity to choose loyalty to the Lord.

If we petition God to forgive someone else, as Moses did and as Jesus did when he prayed for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34), we are asking that the Lord give them the opportunity to make a better choice. If we are praying for those who have wronged us, as Moses and Jesus did, our plea includes the idea that we relinquish our right to divine retributive justice on our own behalf. In other words, “Lord, I am not pressing charges. Please don’t punish for my sake.”

God provides for the good of everyone (Matt. 5:45), gives each person at least some spiritual “light” (John 1:9; Rom. 1–2), sacrificed his Son to save all who believe (John 3:16), and does not want any to perish (2 Peter 3:9). But intercessory petitions on behalf of others can still make a difference in their lives. There is “no necessary incompatibility in affirming both that God always seeks what is best for each of us and that God may at times wait to exert all the noncoercive influence that he can justifiably exert on a given person until requested to do so by another person.”22