Joshua & Caleb
Observe carefully those faithful to the LORD and also leaders faithful to Moses. Then listen to the grumbling rabble of the disobedient and see a stark contrast.
Two faithful successors stand out because these contemporaries of Moses (who began this forty year exodus at age 80) stood faithfully with the LORD’s anointed leader: Joshua and Caleb.
So the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water so that we may drink!” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?”
Joshua did just as Moses told him..
Exodus 17:2, 10a NASB2020
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said,
“We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will certainly prevail over it.”
Numbers {In The Wilderness} 13:30 NASB2020
You Will Not Be Led into the Promised Land
We could have begun our pilgrimage much earlier than Noah.
“I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Genesis 9:11
Even though Abraham was far from sinless, the Books of Moses follow his blessings and covenants with the LORD.
As we approached the Promised Land we noted the disobedience of Lot’s wife, sin in the cities pervasive beyond the Jordan near the Dead Sea.
And it would seem that Moses, the LORD’s chosen leader in the wilderness encounters nothing but complaint, disobedience and sin by the ‘chosen’ now stranded in the desert.
While journeying from Mount Sinai to the promised land, although mention is made of important events delaying the Hebrews in the wilderness, I have not dwelled on an important consequence of disobedience we suppose to be just part of the Hebrew journey —
40 YEARS! in the wilderness
Numbers: [Bamidbar] 13:
25 When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, they went on and came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh..
.. “We came into the land where you sent us, and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
28 Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And indeed, we saw the descendants of Anak there!
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will certainly prevail over it.”
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, because they are too strong for us.” 32 So they brought a bad report of the land which they had spied out to the sons of Israel…
Numbers 14:
And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.
2 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!
5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in the presence of all the assembly of the congregation of the sons of Israel.
6 And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes…
10 But all the congregation said to stone them with stones. Then the glory of the Lord appeared in the tent of meeting to all the sons of Israel…
Moses then pleads for their lives
11 And the Lord said, “.. I will strike them with plague and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they.”
13 But Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for by Your strength You brought this people up from their midst…
19 .. Please forgive the guilt of this people in accordance with the greatness of Your mercy, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.” So the Lord said,
“I have forgiven them in accordance with your word..”
וְאוּלָם חַי־אָנִי וְיִמָּלֵא כְבוֹד־יְהוָה אֶת־כָּל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.
Numbers 14:21 KJV
Therefore – your punishment!
14:22 כִּי כָל־הָאֲנָשִׁים הָרֹאִים אֶת־כְּבֹדִי וְאֶת־אֹתֹתַי אֲשֶׁר־עָשִׂיתִי בְמִצְרַיִם וּבַמִּדְבָּר וַיְנַסּוּ אֹתִי זֶה עֶשֶׂר פְּעָמִים וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ בְּקוֹלִֽי׃
- Because all those men which have seen my glory [kāḇôḏ],
- and my miracles [ôṯ], which I did in Egypt
- and in the wilderness,
- and have tempted [nāsâ]me now these ten times,
- (i.e. [10 X] they would NOT be led by the LORD!)
- and have not hearkened [šāmaʿ– shaw-mah’ ] to my voice…
shâmaʻ, shaw-mah’ – שָׁמַע
Strong’s Definitions – H8085 matches the Hebrew שָׁמַע (šāmaʿ), which occurs 1,169 times in 1,072 verses in the Hebrew concordance of the NASB
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attention, obedience, etc.; causatively, to tell, etc.):—× attentively, call (gather) together, × carefully, × certainly, consent, consider, be content, declare, × diligently, discern, give ear, (cause to, let, make to) hear(-ken, tell), × indeed, listen, make (a) noise, (be) obedient, obey, perceive, (make a) proclaim(-ation), publish, regard, report, shew (forth), (make a) sound, × surely, tell, understand, whosoever (heareth), witness.
Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:
Numbers 14:23 KJV
A spirit of obedience perseveres
24 But as for My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring him into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it…
We read the following previously in "You Will Not Be Led."
26 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron again, saying,
27 “How long shall I put up with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel which they are voicing against Me.
28 Say to them, ‘As I live,’ declares the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you;
‘your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness,’
‘all your numbered men according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me…’
31 ‘Your children, however,
whom you said would become plunder—I will bring them in,
and they will know the land which you have rejected.
But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness.”
And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.
Numbers 14:33 KJV
Why 40 Years?
- The distance from Mount Sinai to the place where the Hebrews crossed the Jordan into the promised land is about 400 kilometers or only about 250 miles.
‘In accordance with the number of days that you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall suffer the punishment for your [fn]guilt a year, that is, forty years, and you will know My opposition.
Numbers 14:34 NASB2020
The Rabble React
39 Now when Moses spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, the people mourned greatly…
41 But Moses said, “Why then are you violating the command of the Lord, when doing so will not succeed? 42 Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, to prevent you from being defeated by your enemies.
44 But they presumed to go up unto the hill top.. (while Moses and the Ark of the Covenant remained) .. 45 Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites .. struck them and scattered them…
After Forty YEARS!
Deuteronomy 9:
Shema, Yisroel: Thou art to pass over Yarden today, to go in to possess Goyim greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and walled up to Shomayim
Devarim 9:1 Orthodox Jewish Bible
Hear, O Israel: You are crossing the Jordan today…3 Understand therefore this day, that the Lord thy God
is he which goeth over before thee;
as a consuming fire he shall destroy them,
and he shall bring them down before thy face:
so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly,
as the Lord hath said unto thee.
a few REMINDERS:
- 4 “Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them away from you,
- ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to take possession of this land.’
- Rather, it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.
- 5 It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to take possession of their land,
- but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out from before you,
- and in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 “Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.
Do YOU turn with the 10 against the Lord in the Wilderness?
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