Numbers 14
45 verses
The congregation's weeping, mourning, and threat to Moses—'Why has the LORD brought us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?'—transforms the spies' fearful report into a collective repudiation of exodus itself; the people would 'appoint a leader and go back to Egypt,' a statement of such radical faithlessness that it prompts the most serious divine threat of Numbers: 'I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them.' Moses' intercession—invoking the divine attributes revealed at Sinai ('slow to anger, abounding in love, forgiving sin and rebellion')—turns back the threat, but only partially; the LORD pardons the people yet pronounces a sentence of extraordinary severity: for forty years, the entire faithless generation will wander in the wilderness, with Caleb and Joshua alone entering the land. The arithmetic of judgment is precise and theologically weighted—forty days of spying produces forty years of wandering, a ratio that makes the wilderness itself a school of delayed inheritance where the people learn (or fail to learn) covenant faithfulness. The faithful spies, Caleb and Joshua, are explicitly preserved, while the ten spies who brought a bad report are struck dead before the LORD, and those who presume to enter Canaan despite Moses' warning are defeated by Amalekites and Canaanites, establishing that presumption is as destructive as faithlessness. The chapter's emphasis on Moses' mediation—his willingness to accept the people's reproach, his invocation of the divine covenant name and attributes, his intercession despite being offered the choice to disinherit Israel and make a new nation from his own lineage—establishes him as the indispensable mediator whose faithfulness saves a faithless people from annihilation. Numbers 14's tragic judgment shapes all subsequent wilderness narrative: the land of promise is delayed by a generation, and the wilderness becomes not merely a journey but a prolonged purgation where faith is tested unto the limit.
VERSES IN THIS CHAPTER
1
And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.
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The contrast between human weakness and divine strength is so vivid in this passage. God is faithful in every circumstan...
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!
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3
And wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?
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4
And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.
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5
Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.
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6
And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes:
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7
And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.
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8
If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.
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9
Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not.
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10
But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.
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11
And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?
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12
I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.
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13
And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;)
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14
And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night.
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15
Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,
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16
Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.
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17
And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying,
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18
The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.
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19
Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.
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20
And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word:
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21
But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.
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22
Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice;
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23
Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:
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24
But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it.
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25
(Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley.) To morrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea.
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26
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
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27
How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me? I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against me.
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28
Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the Lord, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:
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29
Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me,
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30
Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.
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31
But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.
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32
But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness.
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33
And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.
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34
After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.
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35
I the Lord have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.
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36
And the men, which Moses sent to search the land, who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up a slander upon the land,
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37
Even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by the plague before the Lord.
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38
But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of the men that went to search the land, lived still.
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39
And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly.
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40
And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised: for we have sinned.
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41
And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the Lord? but it shall not prosper.
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42
Go not up, for the Lord is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies.
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43
For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the Lord, therefore the Lord will not be with you.
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44
But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and Moses, departed not out of the camp.
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45
Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah.
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