Reflections: Numbers 20

Numbers 20

The opening verse of Chapter 20 gives us a turning point in the progress of Israel on its way to the promised land. The “Desert of Zin” plays a role in several of the narratives in the Book of Numbers, and back in Chapter 13:21, when the spies are exploring the promised land, “Zin” is used as the starting point of the mapping of the promised land, indicating it is the southern border of territory that is the “promised land.” This means at the opening of Chapter 20, the Israelites are on the cusp of moving into the next phase of the operation. We haven’t gotten to Chapter 33 yet, but there it says that the Lord had commanded Moses to list “the stages in their journey.” (33:2). By taking the specifics laid out in Chapter 33 and referencing the story as it plays out throughout Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, we can logically determine that the events in Chapter 20 take place during the 40th and final year of Israel’s wandering. 

In what appears to be a passing note, verse 1 states that this is where Moses’s older sister Miriam died and was buried. Nothing more is said, as Miriam has no connection to what takes place here. While we must presume she rejoined the people after the time for purification as prescribed in the law for her in the cleansing of her leprosy back in Chapter 12, she is not mentioned again until this short reference here about her death. Perhaps the experience of having leprosy took everything out of her as an active force within the Israelite community. Perhaps even though she was cleansed of the disease, the effects continued to hobble her (as discussed earlier, we always reap what we sow). But like the rest of the “original generation” of the freed Israelite slaves, she had to pass on before the “next generation” could move into the promised land. 

Starting in verse 2, we once again have an episode of the people complaining and grumbling – is this out-and-out rebellion? It might as well be. The one thing the people of Israel cannot seem to endure is physical hardship or deprivation. Yet this episode has a different tone. Past episodes of complaint were about the fact that the journey was inconvenient in the first place, or that the menu was boring (even though God was providing ample food), or had roots in bigotry or jealousy. The concept of being without water in the desert can lead to death by dehydration in  as soon as three days, and it’s a miserable way to die; perhaps we can cut the people a little slack in this episode, as compared to the complaints offered after only three days of being on foot back in Chapter 11. But it does appear that once the Israelites are triggered, they wholeheartedly give in to their frustration, anger, and disrespect. And while verse 3 says they “quarreled with Moses,” this is obviously aimed at God himself. 

The opening volley in the peoples’ complaint is particularly problematic. “If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord!” This is obviously a reference to Korah’s rebellion, the worst-case scenario prior to this. Considering that the Israelites are conceptually at the tail end of their 40-year sentence of wandering in the desert, perhaps we are witnessing the “younger generation” starting to take after their elders. We can see this in the specifics of what the people complain about lacking — the reference to “figs, grapevines and pomegranates” does not relate to what they used to complain they “enjoyed” in Egypt (recall the reminiscing about “leeks and onions”) but is rather a direct reference to the produce the spies brought back from the promised land (see Numbers 13:23). The frame of reference is not “Egypt experience vs. Wilderness,” but focused on the expectation of what the promised land has to offer. 

Another difference is this set of complaints has a specific geographic reference. In verse 4, the people ask why they were brought “here” to die. Past complaints were anchored in the concept that the Israelites had been generally led out of Egypt at all. This complaint has a frame of reference that was genuine – as noted above, the need for water was real. Previous complaints were about what God was doing (or not doing) or the extent of his provision (or lack thereof). Therefore, God is not going to rebuke the Israelites this time, but instead, provide what they need. As God provided Manna for sustenance, now he was going to show them he could also provide water. 

The process for finding the solution is in keeping with past practice. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces before God in the tent of meeting. God speaks to them, instructs them, and sent them out to accomplish his will. 

The instructions God gave Moses and Aaron are simple and specific. In verse 7, Moses was to take his staff in hand and then speak to the rock in front of the Israelites assembled there. God would then have the rock pour out water. God specifically seems to lay the responsibility for the production of this water on Moses: “YOU will bring forth water . . . “ 

But things are different this time. Back in Exodus 17, in this same geographic spot, the people were angry at Moses for the same reason — no water to drink. But the complaint against Moses was qualitatively different — in Ex. 17:3, the people had complained about more than being thirsty but had bemoaned the fact that they had been “forced” to leave Egypt in the first place. Here, the instructions to Moses were different. God told him to take his staff, strike the rock, and water would come out. And so, it did! This triumphant vision of the supernatural power of God providing the water the people needed became part of Hebrew legend, celebrated by King David and other hymn writers in the book of Psalms (see 78:15-20; 105:41; 114:8) and the prophet Isaiah (48:21). 

But here, God tells Moses to take his staff, but instead of striking the rock, he is told to “speak” to the rock. God is apparently expecting Moses to raise the bar here and demonstrate the faithfulness of God without the use of trappings like a shepherd’s staffs, or magic wands, or any other tangible concept — just speak. (This brings to mind of the Roman soldier who asked Jesus to heal his servant but had enough faith to not need to Jesus to travel and physically be next to the sick servant — all Jesus needed to do is “speak the word”). 

Unfortunately, Moses doesn’t do this. We’ve seen the façade of Moses waver before — cracks in his demeanor when his frustration starts to get the better of him. Back in the previously cited episode in Exodus 17, Moses cries in exasperation, arguing with the Israelites and questioning as to why they take out their frustrations on himself, rather than God. He then turns to God and remarks, “What am I to do with these people? They are ready to stone me.” (Ex. 17:4). Despite his maturity and grounded gentle strength that he has in God’s presence, Moses can get edgy. 

But here, in this story, Moses is more than just “edgy,” or even “crabby.” Moses is FED — UP! Perhaps it’s the culmination of dealing with these same kinds of complaints from the people over and over and over again. Moses usually keeps his reactions to himself or shares them with God (as he did in Exodus 17). Even in dealing with Korah’s rebellion in Numbers 16:15, when Korah’s rebellious cheekiness for God not fulfilling the promise of the entry into the promised land pushes him too far, Moses takes his frustrations back to God and asks God to refuse Korah’s sacrificial offering because “I have not taken so much as a donkey from them, nor have I wronged any of them.” 

Here, Moses loses his cool. He’s apparently finally had it with the Israelite’s complaints, and the heartache and suffering they have consistently brought upon him. He shouts, “Listen you rebels,” using a very severe term to describe the people as not just rebellious, but stubbornly so, as being refractory, unmanageable, so contentious and contrary as to be absolutely at odds with God. The problem here is that perhaps in the past, especially at the time of Korah’s rebellion, this might have been a fair judgment. But God doesn’t intend this demonstration of his power to be a rebuke. This time, it’s Moses who has given up on the people, and written them off. Moses is way off base here, and this public display of his own petulance costs him dearly. 

The difference this time is instead of using his staff to strike the rock, Moses is instructed to simply speak the miracle into being. Instead, verse 10 reveals Moses succumbing to the accumulated anger, exasperation, and frustration that has been broiling in him for the past 40 years (Note that Psalm 106:32-33 specifically describes this incident, saying that the while the Israelites had angered God by the waters of Meribah, “trouble came to Moses because of them,” so that “rash words came from Moses’s lips.”). Moses then strikes the rock with his staff out of his frustration, not to demonstrate the Lord’s power. Indeed, he hits it twice. 

Obviously, Moses disobeyed what the Lord wanted him to do.  His action demonstrated a lack of trust, as if he believed a mere word would not have been enough. Ultimately, Moses himself had done something the people had done over and over, offending the holiness of God by his own rashnesses, and failing to show proper deference to the presence of God. 

God says as much on all counts, passing sentence on both Moses and Aaron for not trusting God enough to honor Him as holy before the people. The penalty was that Moses and Aaron would be prohibited from leading the people into the promised land. Moses himself therefore bears part of the brunt of God’s judgment against the people for rebellion. 

And it’s sad. But it’s so relatable. Moses’ reaction/behavior hear was because he did not “trust in [God] enough to honor him as holy before the Israelites.” His sin wasn’t rebellion — it was that he didn’t trust. He didn’t believe. 

It’s not that Moses didn’t believe God would produce the water, because God had done that before. He didn’t believe God when the Lord told him to speak to the rock and not to strike it.

Lack of trust or unbelief has many forms. It was easy to see Israel’s unbelief back in Numbers 14, when they refused to trust God and enter Canaan. Here, Moses shows a lack of trust, but in different circumstances. Moses did not trust God to correct His people, so he took it upon himself to do so at a time when God wasn’t looking to mete out correction. Moses acted more like the Egyptian prince he used to be. 

Under the headings of “not trusting God enough to honor Him before God’s people,” there were many specific things Moses was guilty of that were sins a leader among God’s people should take special care to avoid:

One concept that could be at the root of the problems here is that seemingly throw-away information when the chapter opened. Miriam had died. Was Moses acting rashly at a time of emotional vulnerability – it is possible that Moses was having trouble with unresolved grief over his sister’s death?

Moses’s attitude mirrored the actions of the Israelites (although at this time, he probably would have disagreed with that statement). We could classify what Moses did as simple rebellion – he did not do what God told him to do. Moses was so short-tempered, he failed to consider that perhaps God wanted to do something different this time and presumed the miraculous could be made mechanical. 

Did Moses’s frustration grow out of a sense of wounded pride or feeling that the opposition of the people made him feel less important? 

Was Moses guilty of something I have found myself falling into all the time — thinking God needs me to do His work? Was he taking the credit himself for God’s work? Did he presume that God wouldn’t do something that amazing without something more than just a mere word? 

Did Moses present God as being angry with His people, when God wasn’t angry? 

Or was Moses purposefully being a bad example – not showing God as holy before the people? Did Moses give in to his personal anger, making the excuse that it was righteous anger? Was Moses giving in to a knee-jerk concept of presuming the worst about the unbelief and faithlessness of God’s people?

Did Moses simply fail to draw on God’s strength, instead, giving up when God wanted him to persevere? One commentator noted that  “Perhaps there is no story in all the Old Testament more searching for all who are called to lead the people of God, than this of the failure of Moses. What he did was most natural. Therein lay the wrong of it.” 

We need to recognize that while what Moses did was certainly relatable and familiar, we need to come to grips that what Moses did was an UNHOLY, UNRIGHTEOUSNESS thing. It was as much an affront to God as the Israelites turning up their nose at the Manna, and wishing they were still slaves in Egypt. Moses, in striking the rock twice when God said, “just speak,”  made God look no different than an angry man or one of the moody pagan gods. He did not reflect the heart and character of God before the people.

Then, in verse 14, the story shifts to the progress of the journey; apparently, the plan was to move into the land of Canaan via a route through the nation of Edom, which bordered the promised land to southeast (The location of Edom was generally directly south of the Dead Sea, in an area that today makes up a part of southeast Israel and southwest Jordan.). 

Moses sends messengers to the king of Edom to request safe passage through that nation. It is in the form of a diplomatic letter from one sovereign to another. Scholars note that the format of the message fits in with the usual way that nation-states did business with one another in the ancient world. Moses first appeals to a common heritage the two nations share, identifying the sender of the message as “brother Israel,” because the Edomites were descended from Isaac’s son Esau, while the Israelites were descendants of Esau’s twin, Jacob. There is a presumption that despite the Israelites’ 430-year sojourn into Egypt which started under the guidance of Joseph, the descendants of Esau would still be familiar with the God of Israel and would have some knowledge of their history. This history is framed in a manner to evoke sympathy for the suffering God’s people had endured, and to portray them as honorable in seeking to bring glory to God’s name. Moses humbly requests passage through Edom, which would allow the Israelites to travel along the eastern side of the south part of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Israel expected no provision from the Edomites because God provided for all their needs. The specific request to travel on the  the “King’s Highway,” which was the major trade route linking Damascus in Aram (modern day Syria, north of Canaan) with  Egypt, Arabia, and all the lands in between, was also meant to indicate the good faith of Israel, as traveling on the main road would have placed Israel’s movement in plain sight of everyone (sort of like traveling down a major interstate in modern America). 

But this request seems to indicate a change in strategy for the Israelites. 38 years before, when they they had stopped at Kadesh (which is the place where the rock that produced water was located), it seemed that their plan of attack was to march northward directly through the land of Canaan, conquering west. But the events of the first foray into the promised land, with the negative report of the spies and the rebellion of the people against the Lord seems to have changed all that. This time, the plan appears to be one of circumventing the populated areas in the southernmost portions of the promised land, traversing southern Transjordan, then bursting into the land by attacking from the east. 

But Edom flat-out refused. Objectively, this refusal was completely unnecessary. It would have cost Edom nothing and would have been a genuine gesture of goodwill. But the Edomites, perhaps out of suspicion, fear, or some memory of the dispute between Jacob and Esau (which resulted in Jacob stealing Esau’s birthright as the older brother), adamantly refused. They even threatened Israel with military reprisal if they dared to try to pass through the country. 

In the ancient world, and even today, it is a recognized principle of international law that a sovereign has a right to refuse passage through its national territory to strangers. But in a case like this, in a time when emigration was frequent and universally allowed, it was cruel, oppressive, and perhaps even rude for Edom to refuse passage to a group of people who were essentially refugees, otherwise inoffensive, and not traveling as an armed force. The offense is amplified by the fact that the Israelites were truly kinsmen of the Edomites. In verse 21, the Edomites actually make a show of force, when Israel has made no threat. 

Verse 21 ends with the matter-of-fact statement that “Israel turned away from them.” Edom’s rude refusal would prove to make Israel’s journey  much more discouraging and dangerous (see Numbers 21:4-5). Yet there seems to be no record of God punishing Edom for this sin. In fact, Israel was later commanded to continue to treat the Edomites as a brother nation (Deuteronomy 23:7).  

This short episode is actually a victory for the Israelites. Here, God shows us by Israel’s example  how to leave the judgment of those who offend us or hurt us to the LORD, and how to show love to those who behave like our enemies  – even if they are our kin (literally OR spiritually). 

Verse 22 begins the last vignette of this chapter — the death of Aaron, the high priest, and the older brother of Moses. 

While it may not seem so through the course of this chapter, a lot of time has passed since the events that opened Chapter 20. Referring again to Numbers 33, the death of Aaron is listed a a major milestone in the history of the Exodus. Numbers 33:38 specifically pegs this event as taking place “in the fortieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt.” It is interesting to note that the narrative relating to the 40-year time frame in which the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness is basically compressed into five and a half or so chapters here in the book of Numbers, but the single year spent camped around Mt. Sinai is related in some 50 chapters of scripture. In a sense, the nation of Israel had been moving for 40 years but had made little progress. 

The people pause at Mount Hor. The Lord specifically reveals to Moses and Aaron that Aaron is about to die. Here Aaron (and later Moses) is given an amazing gift. God gave them the time and the awareness to prepare for their impending deaths. 

The phrase “gathered to his people” appears to be a euphemism for death as applied to Aaron here. But, in Hebrew tradition, his is the usual phrase to describe the death of a righteous man at a ripe old age. It is also used to describe the death of Abraham (Genesis 25:8), Ishmael (Genesis 25:17), Isaac (Genesis 35:29), Jacob (Genesis 49:33), and Moses (Deuteronomy 32:50). The phrase is more than a figure of speech: it describes a central Old Testament conviction about life after death, that in Sheol, the place of the dead, people will be reunited with other members of their family. 

Verse 28 illustrates a vitally important concept. Moses removed the garments of the high priest from Aaron, and put them on Aaron’s son, Eleazar. This established that while Aaron, the high priest, had died, the priesthood – together with its access and relationship with God – would carry on. The relationship any individual person had with God in Israel did not depend on the person of Aaron, but on the high priest – whomever that was. In Jesus the Messiah, God has made sure there will always be a high priest for us (see Hebrews 4:14-16), and we need not depend on any person for our relationship with God. If a priest never dies, then his priesthood remains forever – therefore, the priesthood of Jesus remains forever. 

- John Russell