The middle chapters of Numbers see the people of Israel make further progress in their journey towards the promised land, passing through the wilderness of Paran in chapter 13 to Kadesh (see map below), from where they will send out spies via the mountains into Canaan. Representatives from each of the 12 tribes report back after their missions, with the majority counselling caution (most memorably at 13:33 comes the description of the sons of Anak as "giants", which made the spies feel like "grasshoppers"), though Caleb is alone in urging them to still advance.
Later in chapter 22, Moabite king Balak hires the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites, but God intervenes in one of the most memorable passage of the Bible so far. At 22:23, there's a very clever and humorous depiction of Balaam's shortsightedness, when his ass (donkey) sees the angel of the Lord carrying a sword in his hand before Balaam the seer does. The cautiousness of Balaam's ass saves his master's life, and at 22:28, God even enables the ass to speak, saying to Balaam, "What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?" There's a reference to Balaam's ass in Dostoevsky's last great work, Brothers Karamazov, in reference to the lowly lackey Smerdyakov, the idea being that God can reveal his miracles and instil his faith in anyone, including a donkey.
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| The Israelites journey north from Mt Sinai via Kadesh to Canaan |
Trouble starts to brew in the camp that night, with the Israelites losing faith in Moses and Aaron as leaders, and even looking to appoint a new "captain" who will take them back to Egypt. Caleb and Joseph remain faithful to Moses, who is distraught at this growing rebellion, and even "rent their clothes" asunder (14:6) and entreat the people to have faith that God will lead them to victory. When God finds out about this dissent, he is furious and says that the Israelites have shown a lack of faith "ten times" (14:22) now and that his patience has been tested too much. Moses appeals to God to show mercy, and wins a concession; rather than all the people being wiped out, only all those aged 20+ (except Moses, Aaron, Caleb and Joshua), effectively an entire generation, are forced to die in the wilderness. As 14:33 describes, "And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness."
In fear of God, the Israelites then gather the determination to march into Canaan but, without God's support, they're completely routed and forced to retreat to Hormah. After all this drama, chapter 15 gets bogged down in detail about the sin offerings that must be made by Israelites, and non-Israelites, in their promised land of Canaan. This new standard is then immediately applied to a poor guy who was just simply gathering sticks on the sabbath. God tells his people to take the man outside the camp and stone him to death. Horrific episodes of injustice like this make me wonder how anyone can derive moral guidance from these early books of the Old Testament.
At 16:12-14, Korah (a son of Levi, so of the priestly class), as well as Dathan and Abiram, take Moses to task, accusing him of false promises and seeking to wrest control of the tabernacle away from Aaron. They are supported by 250 senior members of the community, whom Moses instructs to gather at the sacred altar the next morning to let God decide the matter. Moses seems genuinely uncertain of the outcome, but God acts ruthlessly, making the earth (at 16:32) open up to swallow Korah and the other rebels, while (at 16:35) he burns alive all the 250 men who sought to usurp Aaron and Moses. God then decides to infect the rest of the crowd (all 14,700) with plague for holding Moses responsible for all the killing, while Aaron "stood between the dead and the living", making an atonement and placating God with incense.
To confirm his support of Aaron as high priest, God instructs each house of Israel to donate a rod (17:2) and then, in a miraculous intervention, makes the rod of Levi the one that blossoms. Chapter 18 is a little tedious, and it seems to me that, throughout Numbers, God often alternates between merciless brutality and detailed instruction. In this case, the command is that Aaron and the Levites must henceforth take responsibility for any transgressions committed in connection with the sanctuary. At the start of chapter 19, God asks for an unblemished "red heifer", which will be used by Aaron's son Eleazer for a rite of purification. Then, in chapter 20, there follows a dramatic passage that I failed to fathom fully, but here goes; after the death of Moses' sister Miriam at Kadesh, the Israelites complain of a lack of water, so God tells Moses to go and speak to a rock. Moses gets frustrated and hits the rock instead, causing water to spring forth, so God tells him and Aaron that they must now be punished and refused entry to Canaan: "Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them." Aaron is later stripped of his garments and slain on the mountain, while his son Eleazar looks on. Why? God works in mysterious ways.
To confirm his support of Aaron as high priest, God instructs each house of Israel to donate a rod (17:2) and then, in a miraculous intervention, makes the rod of Levi the one that blossoms. Chapter 18 is a little tedious, and it seems to me that, throughout Numbers, God often alternates between merciless brutality and detailed instruction. In this case, the command is that Aaron and the Levites must henceforth take responsibility for any transgressions committed in connection with the sanctuary. At the start of chapter 19, God asks for an unblemished "red heifer", which will be used by Aaron's son Eleazer for a rite of purification. Then, in chapter 20, there follows a dramatic passage that I failed to fathom fully, but here goes; after the death of Moses' sister Miriam at Kadesh, the Israelites complain of a lack of water, so God tells Moses to go and speak to a rock. Moses gets frustrated and hits the rock instead, causing water to spring forth, so God tells him and Aaron that they must now be punished and refused entry to Canaan: "Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them." Aaron is later stripped of his garments and slain on the mountain, while his son Eleazar looks on. Why? God works in mysterious ways.
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| Death of Aaron |
In Edom, the king refuses safe passage, so the Israelites offer to take the "high way" (20:17). Military successes follow in Canaan, but so do the murmurings against Moses, causing God to decide to kill some of the Israelites by setting forth snakes among them (21:6). To cure the infestation, Moses makes a bronze serpent, which heals any Israelite that gazes at it. At 21:14, there's a reference to the "book of the wars of the LORD", which this link shows to be a history book now lost in the mists of time. Moving north toward Moab, the style of the text becomes epic – "Woe to thee, Moab!" (21:29) – as the Israelites slaughter Sihon and Og of Bashon, two kings of the Amorites, and take control of their lands. There's a great metaphor at 22:4, when Moab describes the ease with which the Israelites win wars with God on their side: "Now shall this company lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field."
Later in chapter 22, Moabite king Balak hires the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites, but God intervenes in one of the most memorable passage of the Bible so far. At 22:23, there's a very clever and humorous depiction of Balaam's shortsightedness, when his ass (donkey) sees the angel of the Lord carrying a sword in his hand before Balaam the seer does. The cautiousness of Balaam's ass saves his master's life, and at 22:28, God even enables the ass to speak, saying to Balaam, "What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?" There's a reference to Balaam's ass in Dostoevsky's last great work, Brothers Karamazov, in reference to the lowly lackey Smerdyakov, the idea being that God can reveal his miracles and instil his faith in anyone, including a donkey.
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| Rembrandt's depiction of Balaam and his ass |
In chapter 23, Moab twice refers to God as having, as it were, "the strength of a unicorn", adding to the surreal nature of these passages. I noticed that later versions of the bible replace unicorn with wild ox. The simple explanation is that unicorn used to just mean an animal with one horn, not a mythical creature. In chapters 23-24, Balaam twice describes Israel "as a great lion", which is about to awaken (origin of the sleeping lion analogy?) and, at 24:4, he falls into a trance when he sees the Almighty, gaining divine access to the "parable" of how the nation of Israel will rise up and conquer. This is encapsulated in the visionary verse of 24:17, "there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth."
Despite this, some of the Israelites are then cursed by God, after sleeping with the women of Moab and worshiping the false idol of the Baal of Peor. As a result, God unleashes a plague that kills 24,000 Israelites (25:9), until it is stopped by Aaron's grandson, the priest Phinehas, who spears both an Israelite leader and his Midianite wife. Phinehas is rewarded by God for his zealous deed and is promised "a covenant of a lasting priesthood", while the Midianites are all slaughtered. There's also a disturbing passage at 25:4, when Moses is told by God to "take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel." It's not clear that this does actually mean beheading (the "heads" could be the leaders of the people), but it might very well mean that; at the very least, it's an instruction to perform a mass hanging. This middle section of Numbers is particularly brutal.
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