This is the 1st reading for Wednesday’s Mass (August 4) an edited version of chapters 13 and 14 in the book of Numbers:
The LORD said to Moses [in the desert of Paran,]
“Send men to reconnoiter the land of Canaan,
which I am giving the children of Israel.
You shall send one man from each ancestral tribe,
all of them princes.”
After reconnoitering the land for forty days they returned,
met Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation of the children of Israel
in the desert of Paran at Kadesh,
made a report to them all,
and showed the fruit of the country
to the whole congregation.
They told Moses: “We went into the land to which you sent us.
It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and here is its fruit.
However, the people who are living in the land are fierce,
and the towns are fortified and very strong.
Besides, we saw descendants of the Anakim there.
Amalekites live in the region of the Negeb;
Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites dwell in the highlands,
and Canaanites along the seacoast and the banks of the Jordan.”
Caleb, however, to quiet the people toward Moses, said,
“We ought to go up and seize the land, for we can certainly do so.”
But the men who had gone up with him said,
“We cannot attack these people; they are too strong for us.”
So they spread discouraging reports among the children of Israel
about the land they had scouted, saying,
“The land that we explored is a country that consumes its inhabitants.
And all the people we saw there are huge, veritable giants
(the Anakim were a race of giants);
we felt like mere grasshoppers, and so we must have seemed to them.”
At this, the whole community broke out with loud cries,
and even in the night the people wailed.
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron:
“How long will this wicked assembly grumble against me?
I have heard the grumblings of the children of Israel against me.
Tell them: By my life, says the LORD,
I will do to you just what I have heard you say.
Here in the desert shall your dead bodies fall.
Forty days you spent in scouting the land;
forty years shall you suffer for your crimes:
one year for each day.
Thus you will realize what it means to oppose me.
I, the LORD, have sworn to do this
to all this wicked assembly that conspired against me:
here in the desert they shall die to the last man.”
The question before us has to do with God’s response to the people’s wailing after they heard the report from 10 of the 12 leaders sent our to reconnoiter, (Caleb and Joshua opposed the other 10). Questions come quickly to mind for a contemporary Christian reader: Isn’t this a case of the standard “Old Testament Angry God?” Where is forgiveness and forbearance? Why is God’s response here so drastic?
The editing of the reading naturally simplifies things a bit, but, overall is a fair job. However, as we consider God’s response, let us add back three verses, 14:2-4, which come immediately after this line above:
At this, the whole community broke out with loud cries, and even in the night the people wailed. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, the whole community saying to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, ” or “If only we would die here in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land only to fall by the sword? Our wives and little ones will be taken as spoil. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?” So they said to one another, “Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt.”
Notice all the emotion in that passage? No sound of a coolly written-up response there. That was not an option for Israelites in 1200 BC. 99.99% of their communication was verbal, and verbal communication differs greatly from written. Generally looser, more colorful, more personal, more emotional, etc. Israelites of that era cannot think or talk in philosophical terms because they are living still 500+ years before the Greeks invent philosophy. Whatever God communicates to them, they can only understand it in their own way, not in a carefully considered philosophical way. They simply cannot conceive of God NOT being emotionally upset when they violate the covenant. They communicate this to us in written Scripture the only way they can. True, we see it as a written text, but remember, the text we read is oral, spoken stories later written down. Give us 2500 more years and we can talk about God’s “permissive will” as distinguished from his “active will.” We should not expect to find such distinctions in texts from their day. Yet their way of approaching what happens is more subtle than we tend to give them credit for.
Next, consider this: after a person becomes a Christian, she or he gradually discerns that they still have a lifetime of often arduous struggle and growth ahead of them, as Christ living in them begins to re-shape them and how they respond to things. Numbers takes the newly-covenanted Israelites through almost a dozen challenges as they move slowly towards the Promised Land. The one here is a foundational challenge: the whole point of trusting God and joining in the covenant was to follow his direction and live in the Promised Land. What they do at this point is to completely reject the covenant and the God they made it with. They decide to repudiate God and Moses (they want to choose a new leader) and crawl back to Egypt and live as slaves! It would be better to have died as slaves in Egypt than to have done all this, they wail!
From their own point of view, a God with any moxie would have to be furious with them. And they show him to us in their Scripture just that way. But (once again, as so many times) God surprises them. He gives them one of the things they ask for (“better to die in the wilderness”). The sin they have committed is its own punishment: “You refuse to try to take the Promised Land; then, very well, you shall not. You suggested dying in the wilderness as preferable, and that is what you will get. But you will not thwart My will–the punishment you have chosen will also mean a new, tougher generation, brought up in the wilderness, will inherit the promise, and with My help they will accomplish the task you rejected.”
Of the original generation, only Joshua and Caleb live long enough to lead the way over the Jordan River. They succeed. God is patient.
(Note: I understand these considerations do not respond to every dark passage found in the Old Testament. That is a larger project.)