Numbers 13
ButlerNo. 12 16 AND afterward the people journeyed from Hazeroth, and pitched in the wilderness of Paran.
13 1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men, that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel : of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a prince among them. And Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran according to the commandment of the LORD : all of them men who were heads of the children of Israel. So they went up, and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob, to the entering in of Hamath. And they went up by the South, and came unto Hebron. . . . And they came unto the valley of Esheol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it upon a staff between two ; they brought also of the pomegranates, and of the figs. And they returned from spying out the land at the end of forty days. And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh ; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the congregation, and shewed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey ; and this is the fruit of it. Howbeit the people that dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fenced, and very great : and moreover we saw the children of Anak there. Amalek dwelleth in the land of the South : and the Hittite, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, dwell in the mountains : and the Canaanite dwelleth by the sea, and along by the side of Jordan. And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it ; for we are well able to overcome it. But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people ; for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land.
14 1 And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried ; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron : and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt ! or would God we had died in this wilderness ! And wherefore doth the LORD bring us unto this land, to fall by the sword ? Our wives and our little ones shall be a prey : were it not better for us to return into Egypt ? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that spied out the land, rent their clothes : and they spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceeding good land. If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it unto us ; a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land ; for they are bread for us : their
10 defence is removed from over them, and the LORD is with us : fear them not. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the glory of the LORD appeared in the tent of meeting unto all the children of Israel.
11. And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people despise me? and how long will
12 they not believe in me, for all the signs which I have wrought among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a nation greater and
13 mightier than they. And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the Egyptians shall hear it; for
14 thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them; and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: they have heard that thou LORD art in the midst of this people; for thou LORD art seen face to face, and thy cloud standeth over them, and thou goest before
15 them, in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if thou shalt kill this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,
16. Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore unto them,
17 therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness. And now, I pray thee, let the power of the
18. LORD be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, The LORD is slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth
19 generation. Pardon, I pray thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of
20 thy mercy, and according as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now. And
21 the LORD said, I have pardoned according to thy word: but in very deed, as I live, and as all
22 the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD; because all those men which have seen my glory, and my signs, which I wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted
23 me these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land
24 which I swore unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that despised me see it: but my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I
25 bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it. . . . To-morrow turn ye, and get you into the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.
26. And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, How long shall I bear with this
27 evil congregation, which murmur against me? I have heard the murmurings of the children
28 of Israel, which they murmur against me. Say unto them, As I live, saith the LORD, surely
29 as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you: your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old
30 and upward, which have murmured against me, surely ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I lifted up my hand that I would make you dwell therein, save Caleb the son of
31. Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey,
32 them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have rejected. But as for you,
33 your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be wanderers in the wil-
34 derness forty years. . . . After the number of the days in which ye spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye
35 shall know my alienation. I the LORD have spoken, surely this will I do unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be con-
36 sumed, and there they shall die. And the men, which Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up an evil report
37 against the land, even those men that did bring up an evil report of the land, died by the
38 plague before the LORD. But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, re-
39 mained alive of those men that went to spy out the land. And Moses told these words unto
40 all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly. And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up to the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up
41 unto the place which the LORD hath promised: for we have sinned. And Moses said, Where-
42 fore now do ye transgress the commandment of the LORD, seeing it shall not prosper? Go not
43 up, for the LORD is not among you; that ye be not smitten down before your enemies. For there the Amalekite and the Canaanite are before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because
44 ye are turned back from following the LORD, therefore the LORD will not be with you. But they presumed to go up to the top of the mountain: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of
45 the LORD, and Moses, departed not out of the camp. Then the Amalekite came down, and the Canaanite which dwelt in that mountain, and smote them and beat them down, even unto Hormah.
De. 1 44 And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you, and 45 chased you, as bees do, and beat you down in Seir, even unto Hormah. And ye returned and wept before the LORD; but the LORD hearkened not to your voice, nor gave ear unto you.
De. 1:26-45. A condensed statement, the fuller account being in Nu. 13 and 14, of the occurrences which led to the banishment of the people for forty years into the wilderness. The facts are treated with freedom, as by one familiar with them, addressing those no less so, yet in consistency with the more strictly historical record of Numbers. There is no real discrepancy between these passages. The plan of sending the spies originated with the people; and, as in itself a reasonable one, it approved itself to Moses; was submitted to God, and sanctioned by him; and carried out under special Divine direction. Espin.—The mission of the spies is ascribed in Numbers to the express command of God, but in Deuteronomy to the wish of the people. But the two things perfectly agree. If Moses consulted God upon the request of the people, the answer would be a Divine command. So also in Numbers Moses is said to exhort the people to go up, only after the return of the spies, while in Deuteronomy it is before. But there is nothing in Numbers to exclude the earlier exhortation, and it is implied by the whole course of the previous history. Birks.
Nu. 13:21-23. Up by the South. The negeb, or south-country, was a well-defined tract of territory forming the southernmost and least fertile portion of the land of Canaan and of the subsequent inheritance of Judah. It extended northward from Kadesh to within a few miles of Hebron, and from the Dead Sea westward to the Mediterranean. The hill-country of southern and central Canaan commences a few miles south of Hebron, and extending northward to the plain of Jezreel, runs out eventually northwestward into the sea in the headland of Carmel. Espin.—The northern barrier of the Desert of Paran or Tih, which forms the terrace of the “Negeb” or south country of Judah, is well described by Williams as “a gigantic natural rampart of lofty mountains, which we could trace for many miles east and west of the spot on which we stood, whose precipitous promontories of naked rock, forming, as it were, bastions of Cyclopean architecture, jutted forth in irregular masses from the mountain barrier into the southern wilderness, a confused chaos of chalk.” We can well understand how, with this barrier in front of them, the children of Israel always spoke of “going up” into Canaan. H. B. T.
Eluding the Canaanites, they entered Palestine, and searched the land to its northernmost boundary, “unto Rehob, as men come to Hamath”—that is, as far as the plain of Coele-Syria. On their way back they descended by Hebron, and explored the route which led into the Negeb by the western edge of the mountains. A. E.—Hebron, being the most southerly place where grapes are now found, Eshcol has been generally identified with it. But Palmer and Drake discovered [on the route into the Negeb] miles upon miles of the small stone-heaps on which in former times the vines were trained. The spies, therefore, would be under no necessity of going so far as Hebron. In any case, these travellers would put Eshcol some way south of Hebron. Work in Palestine.
25. God had told them that Canaan was a land flowing with milk and honey, and they had therefore no need to distrust its advantages. God had promised to give the land to them, and it was needless for them to ascertain the strength of the inhabitants—as if their strength could render the performance of the promise difficult, or their weakness make it easy to him. It is profoundly remarked by Bishop Hall on this very case, “That which the Lord moves unto prospers; but that which we move him unto first, seldom succeedeth.”
Forty days did they spend in the search, and forty years—a year for a day—of toilsome wanderings did that search cost them, connected as it was from beginning to end with distrust and unbelief. Kit.
30. And Caleb stilled the people before Moses. His words show, what appears plainly in the verses following, that the ten spies sought to dissuade the people from advancing by asserting that it was impossible to overcome these powerful enemies. But Caleb, relying on God’s promise, believed that they would be successful, and thus boldly foretold it. Calv.—We have a short account of their sin, with which they infected the whole congregation (Ps. 106:24). They despised the land, they believed not his word. Though, upon search, they had found it as good as he had said, a land flowing with milk and honey; yet they would not believe it as sure as he had said, but despaired of having it, though Eternal Truth itself had engaged it to them. H.
14:2-4. They accuse God of deception and cruelty, as if he were betraying them to the Canaanitish nations, and leading them forth to slaughter. They also accuse God of weakness, as if he were less powerful than the nations of Canaan. At length their blind senselessness comes to its climax when they consult as to their return, and, rejecting Moses, set themselves about choosing a leader who may again deliver them up to Pharaoh. Calv.—What had they to complain of? They had plenty, and peace, and rest, were under a good government, had good company, had the tokens of God’s presence with them, and enough to make them easy even in the wilderness, if they had but hearts to be content. But whither were they thus eager to go to mend themselves? To Egypt! Had they so soon forgotten the sore bondage they were in there? H.—How could they get thither without food? which they could not expect God would send them from heaven when they had forsaken him. Or how could they hope to find their way when his cloud that directed them was withdrawn? Or hope to resist such nations as might oppose their progress? And if they came into Egypt, what reception could they expect from a people whose king, princes, and first-born had lately perished on their account? Patrick.
5-10. Already Caleb had endeavored to still the people before Moses; already Moses himself (De. 1:29) had endeavored to recall the people to obedience. After the failure of these efforts Moses and Aaron cast themselves down in solemn prayer before God; and the appearance of the glory of the LORD in the tabernacle of the congregation was the immediate answer. Espin.
In the case of Caleb and Joshua, in contrast with their ten associate scouts, we have the illustration of how true heroism can be displayed only by souls staid on God. While the others portray the difficulties, these look simply to the fact “Jehovah will go with us.” The theology which makes God everything and man nothing is the theology which makes most of men in the way of true energy and courage. All the world’s great histories, ancient and modern, are full of this theology. All the world’s great tragedies are full of the theology of Caleb and Joshua.
Proffer of Jehovah, and Answer of Moses (verses 11-20).
This is the second time that Jehovah, in his holy anger, had proposed to deal thus with Moses and make him the head of a righteous seed to receive the inheritance which Israel has so justly forfeited. How would any one else have acted in his place? As the offer comes from Jehovah, can the Judge of all the earth do wrong? And if the forbearance of Jehovah is exhausted, may not the patience of Moses well be? Here is an offer that will release him from the thankless burden of a cowardly, degraded people which has again and again almost crushed him. Shall he not accept it, and not only free himself from trouble, but rise to the greatness in history of being the outflowing stock of the visible kingdom of God? No, Moses has in himself an intrinsic greatness of soul beyond all that, though it may make his name less celebrated. He will not dissociate himself from his people. He will rather be the type of the great Intercessor who is to come. The singleness of heart with which, as a saint, he loves God shall not impair the passionate love that bound him to his people. Yea, and above the love of his people rises his passionate earnestness for the honor of Jehovah. Lying there prostrate on the ground before the brightness at the tabernacle—hear—as you may almost hear in the Hebrew—his sobs in broken sentences, as he argues the case with Jehovah and pleads for his people. “And Egypt will hear that thou hast brought thy people in thy might out of the midst of her; and they will say to the inhabitants of this land, they have heard how thou, Jehovah, wert in the midst of thy people, seen of them face to face, and thy cloud standing over them; even thou, Jehovah, going in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. And thou wilt make thy people die as one man. And they will say, the nations that have heard tell of thee: Through being not able to lead his people into the land that he had sworn to them, he hath slain them in the wilderness. And now, I beseech thee, the might of Jehovah shall be magnified, even as thou hast spoken, saying Jehovah, long-suffering and of great mercy, bearing iniquity and transgression and not cleansing, but visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation; forgive, I pray thee, the iniquity of this people according to thy great mercy, and as thou hast been gracious to them from Egypt up to this present time.” Do not these passionate pleadings raise Moses nearer than any born of woman to the type of the great Intercessor? And yet now with the great Intercessor on his side the least in the kingdom of heaven, who is truly in Christ—one with Christ, is greater in power than Moses at the throne. And Jehovah is moved by the passionate plea, and declares, “I have forgiven them according to thy word.” S. R.
God’s proposal, twice made to Moses, to cut off all Israel and make of him a great nation, in neither case does he ever even allude to.
But as the Lord seemed to overlook the glory of his own name before the nations, Moses took the responsibility (boldly, shall we say?) of reminding him as to this point. Apparently his soul was so much absorbed in this line of considerations—the glory of God as before the nations of the earth—that he could not let it drop from his range of view. Hence Moses was mighty (almost omnipotent we may say) in prayer. It would seem to have been the Lord’s special purpose to bring out this prime quality of his religious character and set it in sunlight before all future ages—an illustration of the fact that the great men of all time are mighty with God in prayer. They know the secret of communion with God. They have easy, unrestricted access to his throne. H. C.
Of Moses it was to be said in miniature what of his antitype can be said in full—that his gentleness made him great. Not when he parted the waters of the Red Sea, not when he sang his hymn of triumph on the shores of liberty, is he half so great as when he bore the sorrows and endured the murmurings of that rude undisciplined multitude. If ever a man has inherited the earth by meekness, that man was Moses. His was a grand unselfish life made to wait upon the lives of others. He never reached the promised land; he received not the treasures of Canaan any more than the treasures of Egypt; he bore the toil, and Joshua entered in. He had to bear on his heart the interests of that motley multitude with no other encouragement than faith. Geo. Matheson.
The effectual intercession of Moses was based on two arguments: that God would not destroy his own work begun; that God would not belie his own character revealed. Even so is all-prevailing Christian prayer based upon the same foundations: we plead with God his own work begun in us or others; we plead with him his eternal love and mercy declared in Christ, and extended to sinners in days past. R. W.
21,22. Once more, as before Sinai, the intercession of Moses prevailed; but in pardoning the nation, Jehovah swore by himself that “the whole earth should be filled with his glory,” in the example he would make of the men who had rebelled against him, not one of whom, save Caleb, should see the promised land. The execution of the sentence was to begin on the morrow, by their turning into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. There they were to wander for forty years—a year for each day that the spies had searched the land—till all the men of twenty years old and upward had left their carcasses in the desert. P. S.—
It was at Kadesh that the measure of their iniquity was filled up. At Sinai they had rejected Jehovah, who led them out of Egypt, and had desired a god such as they formerly possessed in Egypt; at Kadesh they rejected the land of Jehovah—the land of promise, and wished to return to Egypt. K.
- “My servant Caleb.” Caleb had another spirit, not only a bold, generous courageous, noble, and heroic spirit; but the Spirit and influence of the God of heaven thus raised him above earthly fears; therefore he followed God fully. A. C.—This other spirit was the spirit of faith, which the Law cannot give, the spirit of adoption, not of bondage. By the guidance of this spirit, Caleb constantly followed the Lord and obtained the promised inheritance. Ainsworth.
26-35. The decree was gone forth, the consumption was determined, they did not seek the Lord while he might be found, and now he would not be found. H.—One significant addition in Deuteronomy (1:38): Ye returned and wept before the Lord; but the Lord would not give ear to you. Their tears were like those of Esau, on the borders of whose lands they were encamped, and could not reverse the settled judgment of God. They too, like him, had despised their birthright, and “thought scorn of that pleasant land.” Birks.
36,37. The sudden death of the ten evil spies. While the sentence was passing upon the people, before it was published, they died of the plague before the Lord. God hereby showed his particular displeasure against them who sinned, and made Israel to sin. They sinned themselves in bringing up a slander upon the land of promise. Those greatly provoke God who misrepresent religion, cast reproach upon it, and raise prejudices in men’s minds against it, or give occasion to those to do so who seek occasion. H.
40-45. Against Jehovah’s sentence they rebelled; and, having been afraid when they should have been bold, they were now bold when they should have been afraid. Disregarding the command of Moses, they attacked the Amalekites, and suffered a severe defeat, learning to their cost, and showing to us, that the bravery of presumption is just as fatal as the cowardice of unbelief. D. F.—Moses said, “Go not up, for Jehovah is not among you.” The pillar of cloud did not move, and Moses remained in the camp. But they went up, notwithstanding; and the Amalekites and Amorites came down from the mountains, and drove them back to Hormah. K.
Hormah seems, with reason, identified with the ruins of Sebaita, twenty-four miles north of Kadesh. It is on the very northern extremity of the wilderness of Paran. H. B. T.—In the immediate neighborhood of Kadesh are the mountains of the Amorites, still called by their scriptural name in its Arabic form, ‘Amarin. An ancient fort guards a mountain-pass in these hills, by which we reach a fertile plain having the ruins of a fine town in its midst. The city is named Sebaitah (the Hebrew Zephath, or “watch-tower”); and the fort is called by an Arabic word meaning also watch-tower. Comparing Nu. 14:43, 45, and Judges 1:17 we find that Zephath and Hormah are the same, or rather that Hormah was called the city of the Zephath or watch-tower, because of the tower or fort which guarded the approach to it. E. H. Palmer.
Thus issued this sad case of strange, cruel unbelief. The conquest of Canaan was postponed almost forty years; the generation of twenty years and over when they came out from Egypt were doomed to fruitless wandering and an early death in the wilderness; and that nation and the world had one more lesson on the wisdom of believing God, and on the infinite folly as well as guilt of refusing to believe and trust the Lord. Moses (in De. 1:19-46) gives a somewhat full recapitulation of these scenes. In Ps. 90 he puts in the form of sacred song his meditation and prayer on this sad yet most instructive event. H. C.
One of many internal proofs of the truthfulness of the record is that Moses does not conceal from us the difficulties and even the disasters which they met with. Had the Pentateuch been written in long subsequent times, when the sojourn in the wilderness was surrounded by a halo of romance, while its physical difficulties were probably magnified (Jer. 2:2, 6), the conduct of the Israelites would have been put in a better light, and certainly they would not have been represented as poor soldiers, not to say cowards. R. P. S.
WILDERNESS OF PARAN. ROUTE OF ISRAEL FROM SINAI TO KADESH. LOCALITY OF KADESH-BARNEA. THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS’ BAN: STATIONS; LIFE AND MAINTENANCE OF THE PEOPLE.