Numbers 20
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Numbers 20:2:
"Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron." |
It was surely an evidence of heartlessness and insensitivity on the part of the people that they should have allowed their bitter complaining to surface once again when Moses' sorrow was so fresh. It was an inopportune time, and singularly innapropriate, for them to have done so. The truth is, however, that when people are "out of sorts" with God, they become clumsy and insensitive, and intrude unceremoniously at all manner of unsuitable times, causing needless hurt and distress that could, and should, have been avoided.
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Jan 30, 2022: The Dispatch: Why Christians Bond With Corrupt Leaders
The story comes from the book of Numbers, Chapter 20. As a bit of background, the people of Israel, led by Moses, were in a wilderness with no water, and the people were angry at Moses. God then gave Moses explicit instructions: “Speak to the rock while [the people] watch, and it will yield its water.”
But Moses, angry at the rebellion against him, revised God’s instructions. He gathers the people and says, “Listen, you rebels! Must we bring water out of this rock for you?” Then Moses struck the rock with his staff.
Moses defied God. Yet here’s the fascinating part. The water came out anyway. The people drank. Their livestock drank. They were saved from thirst.
Moses, however, wasn’t spared from the consequences of his disobedience. God barred Moses from ultimately entering the promised land—a severe and painful sanction for the great prophet who led his people out of Egyptian bondage.
The story comes from the book of Numbers, Chapter 20. As a bit of background, the people of Israel, led by Moses, were in a wilderness with no water, and the people were angry at Moses. God then gave Moses explicit instructions: “Speak to the rock while [the people] watch, and it will yield its water.”
But Moses, angry at the rebellion against him, revised God’s instructions. He gathers the people and says, “Listen, you rebels! Must we bring water out of this rock for you?” Then Moses struck the rock with his staff.
Moses defied God. Yet here’s the fascinating part. The water came out anyway. The people drank. Their livestock drank. They were saved from thirst.
Moses, however, wasn’t spared from the consequences of his disobedience. God barred Moses from ultimately entering the promised land—a severe and painful sanction for the great prophet who led his people out of Egyptian bondage.
| "The census here ordered had clearly been anticipated, as far as the numbers were concerned, by the results of the half-shekel poll-tax for the service of the sanctuary levied some time before on all adult males on pain of Divine displeasure (Exodus 30:11, sq.). Since all who were liable had paid that tax (Exodus 38:25, 26), it would only have been requisite to make slight; corrections for death or coming of age during the interval. The totals, however, in the two cases being exactly the same, it is evident that no such corrections were made, and that the round numbers already obtained were accepted as sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes. After their families. This was to be a registration as well as a census. No doubt the lists and pedigrees collected at this time laid the foundation of that exact and careful genealogical lore which played so important a part both in the religious and in the secular history of the Jews down to the final dispersion. Every Jew had not only his national, but also (and often even more) his tribal and family, associations, traditions, and sympathies. Unity, but not uniformity, - unity in all deepest interests and highest purposes, combined with great variety of character, of tradition, and even of tendency, - was the ideal of the life of Israel. The number of their names. It is impossible to help thinking of the parallel expression in Acts 1:15, of the similarity in position of the two peoples, of the contrast between their numbers and apparent chances of success, of the m
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