The children of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month. The people stayed in Kadesh. Miriam died there, and was buried there.
Parallel Translations
-
The children of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month. The people stayed in Kadesh. Miriam died there, and was buried there.
-
Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.
-
And the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month; and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (16)
Passages linked to Numbers 20:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Numbers 13:21 So they went up, and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, to the entrance of Hamath.
- Exodus 15:20 Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dances.
- Numbers 33:36 They traveled from Ezion Geber, and encamped at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.
- Numbers 26:59 The name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt. She bore to Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister.
- Numbers 27:14 because in the strife of the congregation, you rebelled against my word in the wilderness of Zin, to honor me as holy at the waters before their eyes.” (These are the waters of Meribah of Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.)
- Exodus 2:4 His sister stood far off, to see what would be done to him.
- Exodus 2:7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?”
- Numbers 12:1 Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Cushite woman.
- Numbers 12:10 The cloud departed from over the Tent; and behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. Aaron looked at Miriam, and behold, she was leprous.
- Numbers 12:15 Miriam was shut up outside of the camp seven days, and the people didn’t travel until Miriam was brought in again.
- Numbers 20:16 When we cried to Yahweh, he heard our voice, sent an angel, and brought us out of Egypt. Behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the edge of your border.
- Deuteronomy 1:22-23 You came near to me, everyone of you, and said, “Let’s send men before us, that they may search the land for us, and bring back to us word of the way by which we must go up, and the cities to which we shall come.” The thing pleased me well. I took twelve of your men, one man for every tribe.
- Deuteronomy 2:14 The days in which we came from Kadesh Barnea until we had come over the brook Zered were thirty-eight years: until all the generation of the men of war were consumed from the middle of the camp, as Yahweh swore to them.
- Deuteronomy 32:51 because you trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you didn’t uphold my holiness among the children of Israel.
- Psalms 29:8 Yahweh’s voice shakes the wilderness. Yahweh shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
- Micah 6:4 For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage. I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (27 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Moses and Aaron’s sister.
Moses and Aaron’s sister.
This was forty years after their departure from Egypt.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Num 20:1 Then came the children of Israel, [even]…
Num 20:1 Then came the children of Israel, [even] the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.
Ver. 1. In the first month.] To wit, of their fortieth year, after they came out of Egypt. For from this chapter to the end of Deuteronomy, are described the passages of the last year only, of their journeying in the wilderness; little being recorded of the thirty-eight years, since the spies’ report.
Read full note →
And Miriam died there.] A good woman, and of great use to the people in their travels. {Mic 6:4} But once she raised a great storm against her brother’s wife, {Num 12:1} about precedency probably: as did likewise in this kingdom Anne Starthope, Duchess of Somerset, against Katherine Parr, Queen Dowager, wife to her husband’s brother, the Lord Admiral, in the days of King Edward VI. This Anne died A.D. 1587, being ninety-nine years of age. {a} Miriam could be no less likely than 130, taking her to be same that was set to watch what would become of Moses, when he was laid out in an ark of bulrushes. {Exo 2:4}
{a} Life of Edw. VI, p. 81. Camd., Elis., fol. 356.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Then, to wit, after many other stations and long…
Then, to wit, after many other stations and long journeys here omitted. but particularly described Num 33.
The desert of Zin; a place near the land of Edom, distinct and distant from that,
Read full note →
Sin, Exo 16:1.
In the first month, to wit, of the fortieth year, as is evident, because the next station to this was in Mount Hor, where Aaron died, Num 20:22,23, &c., who died in the fifth month of the fortieth year, Num 33:38. Moses doth not give us an exact journal of all their occurrences in the wilderness, but only of those which were most remarkable, and especially of those which happened in the first and second, and in the fortieth year.
Kadesh; whether the same place called Kadesh-barnea, where they were long since, Num 13:26, and to which they now return after thirty-eight years’ tedious travels and wanderings in the desert, Deu 2:14, or another place more southerly, it is not material. Miriam died four months before Aaron, and but a few more before Moses.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain After thirty-eight years' tedious marches, or rather tedious rests,…
After thirty-eight years' tedious marches, or rather tedious rests, in the wilderness, backward towards the Red Sea, the armies of Israel now at length set their faces towards Canaan again, and had come not far off from the place where they were when, by the righteous sentence of divine Justice, they were made to begin their wanderings. Hitherto they had been led about as in a maze or labyrinth, while execution was doing upon the rebels that were sentenced; but they were now brought into the right way again: they abode in Kadesh (Num 20:1), not Kadesh-barnea, which was near the borders of Canaan, but another Kadesh on the confines of Edom, further off from the land of promise, yet in the way to it from the Red Sea, to which they had been hurried back. Now,
I. Here dies Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, and as it should seem older than either of them. She must have been so if she was that sister that was set to watch Moses when he was put into the ark of bulrushes, Exo 2:4. Miriam died there, Exo 2:1. She was a prophetess, and had been an instrument of much good to Israel, Mic 6:4. When Moses and Aaron with their rod went before them, to work wonders for them, Miriam with her timbrel went before them in praising God for these wondrous works (Exo 15:20), and therein did them real service; yet she had once been a murmurer (Num 12:1), and must not enter Canaan.
Read full note →
II. Here there is another Meribah. one place we met with before of that name, in the beginning of their march through the wilderness, which was so called because of the chiding of the children of Israel, Exo 17:7. And now we have another place, at the latter end of their march, which bears the same name for the same reason: This is the water of Meribah, Num 20:13. What was there done was here re-acted.
1. There was no water for the congregation, Num 20:2. The water out of the rock of Rephidim had followed them while there was need of it; but it is probable that for some time they had been in a country where they were supplied in an ordinary way, and when common providence supplied them it was fit that the miracle should cease. But in this place it fell out that there was no water, or not sufficient for the congregation. Note, We live in a wanting world, and, wherever we are, must expect to meet with some inconvenience or other. It is a great mercy to have plenty of water, a mercy which if we found the want of we should own the worth of.
2. Hereupon they murmured, mutinied (Num 20:2), gathered themselves together, and took up arms against Moses and Aaron. They chid with them (Num 20:3), spoke the same absurd and brutish language that their fathers had done before them. (1.) They wished they had died as malefactors by the hands of divine justice, rather than thus seem for a while neglected by the divine mercy: Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! Instead of giving God thanks, as they ought to have done, for sparing them, they not only despise the mercy of their reprieve, but quarrel with it, as if God had done them a great deal of wrong in giving them their lives for a prey, and snatching them as brands out of the burning. But they need not wish that they had died with their brethren, they are here taking the ready way to die like their brethren in a little while. Woe unto those that desire the day of the Lord, Amo 5:18. (2.) They were angry that they were brought out of Egypt, and led through this wilderness, Num 20:4, Num 20:5. They quarrelled with Moses for that which they knew was the Lord's doing; they represented that as an injury which was the greatest favour that ever was done to any people. They prefer slavery before liberty, the house of bondage before the land of promise; and though, the present want was of water only, yet, now that they are disposed to find fault, it shall be looked upon as an insufferable hardship put upon them that they have not vines and figs. It was an aggravation of their crime, [1.] that they had smarted so long for the discontents and distrusts of their fathers. They had borne their whoredoms now almost forty years in the wilderness (Num 14:33); and yet they ventured in the same steps, and, as is charged upon Belshazzar, humbled not their hearts, though they knew all this, Dan 5:22. [2.] That they had had such long and constant experience of God's goodness to them, and of the tenderness and faithfulness of Moses and Aaron. [3.] That Miriam was now lately dead; and, having lost one of their leaders, they ought to have been more respectful to those that were left; but, as if they were resolved to provoke God to leave them as sheep without any shepherd, they grow outrageous against them: instead of condoling with Moses and Aaron for the death of their sister, they add affliction to their grief.
3. Moses and Aaron made them no reply, but retired to the door of the tabernacle to know God's mind in this case, Num 20:6. There they fell on their faces, as formerly on the like occasion, to deprecate the wrath of God and to entreat direction from him. Here is no mention of any thing they said; they knew that God heard the murmurings of the people, and before him they humbly prostrate themselves, making intercessions with groanings that cannot be uttered. There they lay waiting for orders Speak, Lord, for thy servants hear.
4. God appeared, to determine the matter; not on his tribunal of justice, to sentence the rebels according to their deserts; no, he will not return to destroy Ephraim (Hos 11:9), will not always chide; see Gen 8:21. But he appeared, (1.) On his throne of glory, to silence their unjust murmuring (Num 20:6): The glory of the Lord appeared, to still the tumult of the people, by striking an awe upon them. Note, A believing sight of the glory of the Lord would be an effectual check to our lusts and passions, and would keep our mouths as with a bridle. (2.) On his throne of grace, to satisfy their just desires. It was requisite that they should have water, and therefore, thought the manner of their petitioning for it was irregular and disorderly, yet God did not take that advantage against them to deny it to them, but gave immediate orders for their supply, Num 20:8. Moses must a second time in God's name command water out of a rock for them, to show that God is as able as ever to supply his people with good things, even in their greatest straits an in the utmost failure of second causes. Almighty power can bring water out of a rock, has done it, and can again, for his arm is not shortened. Lest it should be thought that there was something peculiar in the former rock itself, some secret spring which nature hid before in it, God here bids him broach another, and does not, as then, direct him which he must apply to, but lets him make use of which he pleased, or the first he came to; all alike to Omnipotence. [1.] God bids him take the rod, that famous rod with which he summoned the plagues of Egypt, and divided the sea, that, having that in his hand, both he and the people might be reminded of the great things God had formerly done for them, and might be encouraged to trust in him now. This rod, it seems, was kept in the tabernacle (Num 20:9), for it was the rod of God, the rod of his strength, as the gospel is called (Psa 110:2), perhaps in allusion to it. [2.] God bids him gather the assembly, not the elders only, but the people, to be witnesses of what was done, that by their own eyes they might be convinced and made ashamed of their unbelief. There is no fallacy in God's works of wonder, and therefore they shun not the light, nor the inspection and enquiry of many witnesses. [3.] He bids him speak to the rock, which would do as it was bidden, to shame the people who had been so often spoken to, and would not hear nor obey. Their hearts were harder than this rock, not so tender, not so yielding, not so obedient. [4.] He promises that the rock should give forth water (Num 20:8), and it did so (Num 20:11): The water came out abundantly. This is an instance, not only of the power of God, that he could thus fetch honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock, but of his mercy and grace, that he would do it for such a provoking people. This was a new generation (most of the old stock were by this time worn off), yet they were as bad as those that went before them; murmuring ran in the blood, yet the entail of the divine favour was not cut off, but in this instance of it the divine patience shines as brightly as the divine power. He is God and not man, in sparing and pardoning; nay, he not only here gave them the drink which they drank of in common with their beasts (Num 20:8, Num 20:11), but in it he made them to drink spiritual drink, which typified spiritual blessings, for that rock was Christ.
5. Moses and Aaron acted improperly in the management of this matter, so much so that God in displeasure told them immediately that they should not have the honour of bringing Israel into Canaan, Num 20:10-12.
(1.) This is a strange passage of story, yet very instructive. [1.] It is certain that God was greatly offended, and justly, for he is never angry without cause. Though they were his servants, and had obtained mercy to be faithful, though they were his favourites, and such as he had highly honoured, yet for something they thought, or said, or did, upon this occasion, he put them under the disgrace and mortification of dying, as other unbelieving Israelites did, short of Canaan. And no doubt the crime deserved the punishment. [2.] Yet it is uncertain what it was in this management that was so provoking to God. The fault was complicated. First, They did not punctually observe their orders, but in some things varied from their commission; God bade them speak to the rock, and they spoke to the people, and smote the rock, which at this time they were not ordered to do, but they thought speaking would not do. When, in distrust of the power of the word, we have recourse to the secular power in matters of pure conscience, we do, as Moses here, smite the rock to which we should only speak, Secondly, They assumed too much of the glory of this work of wonder to themselves: Must we fetch water? as if it were done by some power or worthiness of theirs. Therefore it is charged upon them (Num 20:12) that they did not sanctify God, that is, they did not give him that glory of this miracle which was due unto his name. Thirdly, Unbelief was the great transgression (Num 20:12): You believed me not; nay, it is called rebelling against God's commandment, Num 27:14. The command was to bring water out of the rock, but they rebelled against this command, by distrusting it, and doubting whether it would take effect or no. They speak doubtfully: Must we fetch water? And probably they did in some other ways discover an uncertainty in their own minds whether water would come or no for such a rebellious generation as this was. And perhaps they the rather questioned it, though God had promised it, because the glory of the Lord did not appear before them upon this rock, as it had done upon the rock in Rephidim, Exo 17:6. They would not take God's word without a sign. Dr. Lightfoot's notion of their unbelief is that they doubted whether now at last, when the forty years had expired, they should enter Canaan, and whether they must not for the murmurings of the people be condemned to another period of toil, because a new rock was now opened for their supply, which they took for an indication of their longer stay. And, if so, justly were they kept out of Canaan themselves, while the people entered at the time appointed. Fourthly, They said and did all in heat and passion; this is the account given of the sin (Psa 106:33): They provoked his spirit, so that he spoke unadvisedly with his lips. It was in his passion that he called them rebels. It is true they were so; God had called them so; and Moses afterwards, in the way of a just reproof (Deu 9:24), calls them so without offence; but now it came from a provoked spirit, and was spoken unadvisedly: it was too much like Raca, and Thou fool. His smiting the rock twice (it should seem, not waiting at all for the eruption of the water upon the first stroke) shows that he was in a heat. The same thing said and done with meekness may be justifiable which when said and done in anger may be highly culpable; see Jam 1:20. Fifthly, That which aggravated all the rest, and made it the more provoking, was that it was public, before the eyes of the children of Israel, to whom they should have been examples of faith, and hope, and meekness. We find Moses guilty of sinful distrust, Num 11:22, Num 11:23. That was private between God and him, and therefore was only checked. But his was public; it dishonoured God before Israel, as if he grudged them his favours, and discouraged the people's hope in God, and therefore this was severely punished, and the more because of the dignity and eminency of those that offended.
(2.) From the whole we may learn, [1.] That the best of men have their failings, even in those graces that they are most eminent for. The man Moses was very meek, and yet here he sinned in passion; wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. [2.] That God judges not as man judges concerning sins; we might think that there was not much amiss in what Moses said and did, yet God saw cause to animadvert severely upon it. He knows the frame of men's spirits, what temper they are of, and what temper they are in upon particular occasions, and from what thoughts and intents words and actions do proceed; and we are sure that therefore his judgment is according to truth, when it agrees not with ours. [3.] that God not only takes notice of, and is displeased with, the sins of his people, but that the nearer any are to him the more offensive are their sins, Amo 3:2. It should seem, the Psalmist refers to this sin of Moses and Aaron (Psa 99:8): Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance on their inventions. As many are spared in this life and punished in the other, so many are punished in this life and saved in the other. [4.] That, when our heart is hot within us, we are concerned to take heed that we offend not with our tongue. Yet, [5.] It is an evidence of the sincerity of Moses, and his impartiality in writing, that he himself left this upon record concerning himself, and drew not a veil over his own infirmity, by which it appeared that in what he wrote, as well as what he did, he sought God's glory more than his own.
Lastly, The place is hereupon called Meribah, Num 20:13. It is called Meribah-Kadesh (Deu 32:51), to distinguish it from the other Meribah. It is the water of strife; to perpetuate the remembrance of the people's sin, and Moses's, and yet of God's mercy, who supplied them with water, and owned and honoured Moses notwithstanding. Thus he was sanctified in the, as the Holy One of Israel, so he is called when his mercy rejoices against judgment, Hos 11:9. Moses and Aaron did not sanctify God as they ought in the eyes of Israel (Num 20:12), but God was sanctified in them; for he will not be a loser in his honour by any man. If he be not glorified by us, he will be glorified upon us.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Then came the children of Israel, even the whole…
Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation,.... Not immediately after the transaction of the above things, recorded in the preceding chapters; as the sending of the spies into the land of Canaan, and their report of it; the business of Korah, and the giving of several laws respecting the priesthood, and the purification of the people; but thirty eight years after: nor was this the congregation that came out of Egypt; their carcasses, by this time, had fallen in the wilderness, as had been threatened, excepting some few, so that this was a new generation: what passed during this time we have very little account of, excepting their journeyings from place to place, in Num 33:1, by which it appears, there were eighteen stations between the place they encamped at when the spies were sent, and this they now came to; and that the place from whence they came hither was Ezion Geber; from hence they journeyed:
and came unto the desert of Zin; which is different from the wilderness of Sin, Exo 16:1 as appears by their names, which are different, and by the stations of the Israelites, Num 33:11, hither they came
Read full note →
in the first month; the month of Nisan, on the tenth day of it, according to the Targum of Jonathan, which was the first month of the fortieth year of their coming out of Egypt, so Aben Ezra; with which agrees the Jewish chronologer (u), which says, this was the fortieth year, and the beginning of the month Nisan:
and the people abode in Kadesh: which is by some thought to be different from Kadeshbarnea, from whence the spies were sent, and lay to the south of the land of Canaan, whereas this was upon the borders of Edom; but Doctor Lightfoot (w) shows them to be the same: it is supposed to be eight hours north or northnorth-west of Mount Sinai, which may be computed to be about twenty miles (x); here the Israelites abode about four months, see Num 33:38 the above Jewish chronologer says three months, wrongly:
and Miriam died there, and was buried there; the Jews say (y) she died there the tenth day of the month Nisan, which was ten days after the Israelites came to this place; though, according to the Targum of Jonathan, it was the same day they came thither: Patricides, an Arabian writer, says (z) she died on the seventh day of Nisan, aged one hundred and twenty seven; no mention is made of the people mourning for her as for Aaron, Num 20:29 and for Moses, Deu 34:8 perhaps because of their distress for want of water, as follows.
(u) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 9. p. 25. (w) Chorograph. Cent. in Matt. c. 7. p. 8, 9. (x) Pococke's Travels, p. 157. (y) Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 7. 2. Schulchan Aruch, par. 1. c. 580. sect. 2. (z) Apud Hottinger. Smegma Oriental. l. 1. c. 8. p. 457.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain This chapter begins the history of the fortieth year…
This chapter begins the history of the fortieth year of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Little is recorded of them from the beginning of their second year till this, which brought them to the borders of Canaan. Here is,
1. The death of Miriam, ver. 1.
Read full note →
2. The fetching water out of the rock, ver. 2-13.
3. The treaty with the Edomites, ver. 14-21.
4. The death of Aaron and installment of Eleazar, ver. 22-29.
Then - To wit, after many stations and long journeys here omitted, but particularly described, chap. xxxiii, 1-49. Zin - A place near the land of Edom, distinct and distant from that Sin, Exod. xvi, 1. The first month - Of the fortieth year, as is evident, because the next station to this was in mount Hor, where Aaron died, who died in the fifth month of the fortieth year, chap. xxxiii, 38. Moses doth not give us an exact journal of all occurrences in the wilderness, but only of those which were most remarkable, and especially of those which happened in the first and second, and in the fortieth year. Miriam died - Four months before Aaron, and but a few more before Moses.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain The Israelites come to Zin, and Miriam dies, 1.
CHAPTER XX
The Israelites come to Zin, and Miriam dies, 1.
Read full note →
They murmur for want of water, 2-5.
Moses and Aaron make supplication at the tabernacle, and the
glory of the Lord appears, 6.
He commands Moses to take his rod, gather the congregation
together, and bring water out of the rock, 7, 8.
Moses takes the rod, gathers the Israelites together, chides
with them, and smites the rock twice, and the waters flow out
plenteously, 9-11.
The Lord is offended with Moses and Aaron because they did not
sanctify him in the sight of the children of Israel, 12.
The place is called Meribah, 13.
Moses sends a friendly message to the king of Edom, begging
liberty to pass through his territories, 14-17.
The Edomites refuse, 18.
The Israelites expostulate, 19.
The Edomites still refuse, and prepare to attack them, 20, 21.
The Israelites go to Mount Hor, 22.
Aaron is commanded to prepare far his death, 23, 24.
Aaron is stripped on Mount Hor, and his vestments put on Eleazar
his son; Aaron dies, 25-28.
The people mourn for him thirty days, 29.
NOTES ON CHAP. XX
Verse 1. Then came the children of Israel, c.] This was the first month of the fortieth year after their departure from Egypt. See Nu 33:38, compared with Nu 20:28 of this chapter, and De 1:3. The transactions of thirty-seven years Moses passes by, because he writes not as a historian but as a legislator and gives us particularly an account of the laws, ordinances, and other occurrences of the first and last years of their peregrinations. The year now spoken of was the last of their journeyings; for from the going out of the spies, Nu 13:1-2, unto this time, was about thirty-eight years, De 1:22-23; De 2:14.
Desert of Zin] Calmet contends that this is not the same desert mentioned Ex 16:1, where Israel had their eighth encampment; that in Exodus being called in the original סין sin, this here צין tsin: but this is no positive proof, as letters of the same organ are frequently interchanged in all languages, and particularly in Hebrew.
And Miriam died there] Miriam was certainly older than Moses. When he was an infant, exposed on the river Nile, she was intrusted by her parents to watch the conduct of Pharaoh's daughter, and to manage a most delicate business, that required much address and prudence. See Ex 2:1-8. It is supposed that she was at the time of her death one hundred and thirty years of age, having been at least ten years old at her brother's birth. The Catholic writers represent her as a type of the Virgin Mary; as having preserved a perpetual virginity; as being legislatrix over the Israelitish women, as Moses was over the men; and as having a large portion of the spirit of prophecy. Eusebius says that her tomb was to be seen at Kadesh, near the city of Petra, in his time. She appears to have died about four months before her brother Aaron, Nu 33:38, and eleven before her brother Moses; so that these three, the most eminent of human beings, died in the space of one year!
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Num 20:1. Then — To wit, after many stations…
Num 20:1. Then — To wit, after many stations and long journeys here omitted, but particularly described, chap. 33., and occupying the space of thirty-eight years, during which time the Lord was executing judgment upon the rebels, whose carcasses were sentenced to fall in the wilderness. The desert of Zin — A place near the land of Edom, distinct and distant from that Sin, mentioned Exo 16:1. The first month — Of the fortieth year, as is evident, because the next station to this was in mount Hor, where Aaron died, which was in the fifth month of the fortieth year, Num 33:38. If it should appear strange to us that Moses should pass in silence the transactions of these eight and thirty years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, and give us only the history of the two first years of their peregrinations, we must remember, as Le Clerc justly observes, “that he writes, not so much in the character of an historian as in that of a legislator, whose intention it was to deliver down to posterity all those laws which he had received from God; and that system of laws being completed in the two first years after their leaving Egypt, and no new law being delivered during these eight and thirty years, it did not fall in with his design to insert the history of those years in the Pentateuch.” Miriam died — Four months before Aaron, and but a few more before Moses.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Num. 20 and Num. 21 narrate the journey of…
Num. 20 and Num. 21 narrate the journey of the people from Kadesh round Mount Seir to the heights of Pisgah, near the Jordan, and the various incidents connected with that journey (compare Num 33:37-41). This formed the third and last stage of the progress of Israel from Sinai to Canaan, and took place in the fortieth year of the Exodus.
The incidents are apparently not narrated in a strictly chronological order (see Num 21:1). The leading purpose of Num. 20 seems to be to narrate the loss by the people of their original leaders before their entrance into the land of promise.
Read full note →
Even the whole congregation - This emphatic expression (compare Num 13:26; Num 14:1) points to a re-assembling of the people for the purpose of at last resuming the advance to the promised land. During the past 38 years the “congregation” had been bracken up. No doubt round the tabernacle there had continued an organised camp consisting of the Levites and others, which had been moved from time to time up and down the country (compare Num. 33:18-36). But the mass of the people had been scattered over the face of the wilderness of Paran, and led a nomadic life as best suited the pasturage of the cattle; trafficking in provisions with surrounding tribes (compare Deu 2:26-29; Psa 74:14); and availing themselves of the resources of a district which were in ancient times vastly greater than they now are.
These natural resources were supplemented, where needful, by miraculous aid. The whole guidance of Israel through the wilderness is constantly referred to God’s special and immediately superintending care (Deu 8:4 following; Deu 29:5; Neh 9:21; Isa 63:11-14; Amo 2:10, etc.).
Yet though God’s extraordinary bounty was vouchsafed to them, it is probable that this period was, among the perishing generation at all events, one of great religious declension, or even apostasy. To it must no doubt be referred such passages as Eze 20:15 ff; Amo 5:25 following; Hos 9:10.
Into the desert of Zin - The northeastern part of the wilderness of Paran (or, now definitely fixed by Palmer as the southeastern corner of the desert of Et-Tih, between Akabah and the head of Wady Garaiyeh.) The place of encampment was no doubt adjacent to the spring of Kadesh.
In the first month - i. e. of the fortieth year of the Exodus.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Sin, Zin, or Tsin, nearer to Judea than the…
Sin, Zin, or Tsin, nearer to Judea than the desert, where the Hebrews encamped before, Exodus xvi. 1. (Haydock) --- Moses informs us of very little from the time when the people murmured at Cades-barne, in the second year, till the beginning of the 40th year of their sojournment. --- In Cades. The Rabbins assert, they remained there the first time twenty-nine years, (chap. xiv. 45,) and the second, ten. (Genebrard, in the year of the world 2670.) But we do not believe they continued there above a year the first time. --- Mary. St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Ambrose, suppose she was always a virgin, in which respect she was a figure of our blessed Lady, as well as in her name. She was probably 130 years old, as she was very discreet at the time of the birth of Moses, and employed by Providence in preserving his life, as the blessed Virgin screened our Saviour from the fury of Herod. She had the superintendence over the Hebrew women; (Exodus xv. 20.; Theodoret, in Mic. vi. 4) and hence many apply to her and her brothers those words of Zacharias, (xi. 8,) I cut off three shepherds in one month. Mary died without being permitted to enter the promised land, on account of her murmuring, chap. xii. Thus the synagogue, though proud of her prerogatives, cannot enter the land of rest. (Calmet) --- There. Some place this Cades not far from the Red Sea, (ver. 20,) south of Idumea, while the other was to the north, and nearer Chanaan, being generally called Cades-barne. (Bonfrere and Cornelius a Lapide) (Chap. xx. 16.) --- In this place Mary died, four months before Aaron. (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain Retrospect of the Settlement in Kadesh Miriam’s Death. The…
SEVENTH SECTION
Retrospect of the Settlement in Kadesh Miriam’s Death. The Great Mortality. The Destiny of Moses and Aaron to die in the Desert on Account of their Offence at Meribah
Read full note →
Num_20:1-13
11 Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. 2And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. 3And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would 2God that we had 3died when our brethren cdied before the Lord! 4And why have ye brought up the 4congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there? 5And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink. 6And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the 5tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them.
7And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 8Take the rod, and gather thou the 6assembly together, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock; so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink. 9And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him. 10And Moses and Aaron gathered the dcongregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; 7must we fetch you water out of this rock? 11And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.
12And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this 138congregation into the land which I have given them. This is the water of 9Meribah; 10because the children of Israel 11strove with the Lord, and he was sanctified in them.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Our text has become the knotty point of the greatest misunderstandings. Usually it is understood as follows. The children of Israel came once again to Kadesh in the first month of the fortieth year. And after that, all these things took place that are related afterwards. The most positive facts speak against this fixed assumption. First, the clear testimony of Deuteronomy 1. Second, the history of the water of strife. That is to say, had the Israelites made themselves familiar with the neighborhood of Kadesh-Barnea, then they would have known also its water-springs; but according to our passage, they have hardly more than arrived in the desert of Zin, and have as yet found no springs in it. Third, the people strove with Moses saying: Would that we had perished when our brethren perished before the Lord. After forty years they could not have spoken of brothers that had perished, but only of fathers. Almost the whole generation of the fathers was now buried. They do not even seem to have experienced as yet the rebellion of Korah, for Keil justly remarks: “by that they do not mean the rebellion of Korah (Knobel), for whose destruction גָּוַע, exspirare, is no fitting expression, but those that died gradually during the thirty-eight years.” The rest of their complaint, also, agrees better with the beginning of their sojourn in the desert than with a period when they had long since accustomed themselves to the steppe. According to the internal relations, the murmuring at the want of water connects very simply with the murmuring at the want of bread or food at the Graves of Lust (11.), and falls in the period of the settlement in the desert of Paran, Num_12:16.
Accordingly we assume, that the beginning of Chap.20. is to be understood as pluperfect. Now the children of Israel had come, i.e. the host of God with the whole congregation, into the wilderness of Zin, and the people encamped at Kadesh. More definitely the chronological order was as follows. On the 20th day of the second month of the second year (of the Exodus) the Israelites departed from Sinai (Num_10:11). Since then about a year has elapsed until the settlement in Paran, or till the first month of which our chapter speaks, by which, therefore, is to be understood the third year, because the sentence of a forty years’ abode in the wilderness cannot well be set at a later period. Moreover, it must not be left unnoticed, that already after the meeting of the people, chap. 14, it is said: only Joshua and Caleb shall enter the land of Canaan, so that we must suppose that Moses and Aaron had already received their sentence. It may be further added, that a failure on the part of the great man of God more probably occurred in the first years of his course than at the close, when he was so near his goal.
The motive for the chronological displacement of our history, as was already intimated, was to combine in one account the fates of these two brothers and their sister.
A return of the story to an older history appears to be presented also in the section Num_21:1-3. The account of the defeat of Israel there related is the old story of the unsuccessful raid into the south of Canaan (Num_14:40-45). It is resumed again in this place on account of the vow that Israel made at that time, and now fulfils, of which we will treat further on. Also according to Knobel’s way of seeing the matter, the text not only speaks of two periods of abode in Kadesh, but also according to “the Jehovistic document” of a single abode there (p. 103). “The old register of encampments likewise recognizes only one abode in Kadesh.”
[On the view that there was only one abode in Kadesh, and that the host arrived there not earlier than in the third year of the Exodus, and possibly later, see Tr.’s note at the end of Numbers 14. Dr. Lange’s appeal to Deuteronomy 1. is an argument that deserves more amplification. The language of Deu_1:19, particularly: “We went through all that great and terrible wilderness,” implies a longer journey and more varied experience than could be compressed into eighty days or so. The same may be said of 20:33, which, compared with Num_9:15-23, seems to refer to the wanderings from Sinai to Kadesh.—Tr.]
Num_20:1. On the desert of Zin and Kadesh-Barnea, see above at Num_12:16. On Kadesh see also the article in Gesenius. According to Keil, and the common view, the first month falls in the fortieth year of the Exodus. A difficulty of that view is presented in the inquiry: Why is nothing said of the want of water during the first stay at Kadesh, whereas it is spoken of in reference to the second?
Num_20:4. The displeasure at the want of water again excites the imagination of the malcontents about the deficiencies of the desert in general.
Num_20:6. Moses and Aaron prostrate themselves helplessly at the door of the Tabernacle. To this holy helplessness and surrender, one might say, there corresponds here, too, a wondrous exaltation. The glory of the Lord appeared to them. Let us here call to mind once more how near to one another are the notions, the appearing of the glory of the Lord, and the appearing of the Angel of the Lord.
Ver.7. The instruction Jehovah gives is very different from the instruction at Rephidim (Exo_17:5). On that occasion of drought stronger means were used for the miracle. Moses with some of the elders had to go off away from the people; here he was to take a stand opposite the rock with all the elders and the whole congregation. There he had to smite the rock with his staff; but here Moses and Aaron were simply to speak to the rock, i.e. in a symbolical sense command the rock, though he was provided with the rod in his hand. The help was to be miraculously near, as it was often prepared for the discoverers of springs in sacred history. Jehovah’s directions, therefore, demand of the prophet the most decided confidence and composure of spirit.
Num_20:9. He took the staff from before Jehovah. Does that mean: the staff had been deposited in the sanctuary? It was the miraculous rod that he had in his hand when he received commissions from Jehovah.
Num_20:10-11. Wherein consisted Moses’ sin, in which, as one must suppose, Aaron too was involved as regarded feeling? Absolute unbelief cannot be meant; otherwise it is impossible that Moses would have smote the rock. For it is utterly inconceivable that he acted so in superstitious reliance on the magical effect of his staff. Jehovah’s reproof intimates what was the offence: Ye have not unconditionally believed and obeyed me in a way to prove thereby to the children of Israel that I am the Holy One. The bestowal of water should have borne the character of extreme facility and manifested thereby the majesty of the personal Jehovah in His omnipotence and condescension. To His people, despairing from thirst, Jehovah would grant, of free grace and without reproach, the miraculous fountain. Moses, on the contrary, did not let himself be freed from his indignation at the people by the sight of the glory of the Lord. His address to the people reproaches them as rebels, and expresses not so much a real doubt about the approaching grant, as a contempt for the “mutinous” nation that really was not worth being helped, especially by such a divine miracle: water from the rock. Then he smites twice on the rock, instead of simply speaking to it, with a displeasure that really wanted to smite the people. This disobedience as to form also comes in for consideration, but is not the chief thing in itself. Yet there is reflected in it a feeling of disgust, of fleshly zeal, by which, as the representative of Jehovah, he obscures and distorts to the people the image of Jehovah Himself. How many zealots act just so in the most glaring way, yet suppose that in that way they glorify God before His people! Let it be noted, that it was only on account of this trait of fanatical excitement of the two men, by which they embittered a great gift of free compassion, an hour of pure grace, that entrance into the earthly Canaan, i.e. the ideal completion of their task was denied them.
According to Psa_106:33, a chief stress is laid on the inconsiderate words of Moses, that plainly betrayed his troubled, exasperated feeling. Concerning the fable, falsely ascribed to the Rabbins, that the rock followed the Israelites from Rephidim to Kadesh, see the note of Keil in loc. The symbolical side of the underlying history is brought out in 1Co_10:4. Concerning the rock-fountain at Rephidim, and also concerning the identification of the events, see the Biblew. comm. on Exo_17:1, p. 65. Also Keil on Exo_17:1.
HOMILETICAL HINTS
Chap.Num_20:1-13. The water of strife and the impatience of Moses. The impatience of Moses as the final explosion of a displeasure again and again restrained and subdued through many years, hence not without connection with his seemingly too early death (see Psalms 90). Here, therefore, was verified the Old Testament saying: “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” Still this fate of death also was finally a mercy, and not less a miracle of wisdom. The death of the great brothers and sister.
Footnotes:
[1]And.
[2]omit God.
[3]perished.
[4]assembly.
[5]Tent of Meeting.
[6]congregation.
[7]shall.
[8]assembly.
[9]That is, strife.
[10]where.
[11]chode.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain ARRIVAL AT KADESH, Num_20:1.
ARRIVAL AT KADESH, Num_20:1.
1. The whole congregation — This form of expression strongly confirms the suggestion of a wide dispersion of Israel during the years of Jehovah’s displeasure. But now, when his judicial sentence is about to expire, there is a grand rally of all the wanderers unto Kadesh, the point from which they diverged.
Read full note →
Desert of Zin — This is the Arabah, or valley along the western side of Mount Seir. See Num_13:21, note. It must be distinguished from the Wilderness of Sin, on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, northwest of Mount Sinai. Exo_16:1, note. Palmer advances the theory that Zin is the “south-east corner of the Desert et Tih, between Akabah and the head of Wady Garaiyeh.”
First month — The subsequent account proves that this is the first month of the fortieth year of the Exode. See Introduction, (4.) Kadesh is by some regarded as a district on the south of Canaan, and extending eastward into the Arabah, or Wilderness of Zin. Various points in this district have been selected by travellers as the site of the camp — as, Petra, by Stanley; Ain-el-Weibeh, by Robinson; and Ain Gadis, by Rowlands and Williams, about fifty miles west-northwest of Mount Horeb, according to Palmer’s map. See Gen_14:7, note. Miriam is probably the sister of Moses who watched the ark in the flags of the Nile. Exo_2:4. She never lost the influence of seniority. In Mic_6:4, she is enrolled as one of the three deliverers. She was the first of the family who exhibited prophetic gifts. Exo_15:20. She was unenviably conspicuous in the opposition to Moses (Num_12:1) when the ambitious prophetess was smitten with leprosy, and restored at the entreaty of her sorrowful brothers. This was the last public event in her life. According to Josephus she was the wife of Hur and grandmother of Bezaleel the architect. She must have been about one hundred and thirty years old. In the Koran she is confounded with the Virgin Mary.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1. and Miriam died there] At what period this…
1. and Miriam died there] At what period this took place is not stated. The event has no connexion with the following narrative.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) Then came . . . —It would be…
XX.
(1) Then came . . . —It would be better to translate thus: And (or, Now) the children of Israel came (or, had come) . . ., inasmuch as the interval of time between the events related in the preceding chapters and in this chapter is unknown.
Read full note →
In the first month.—It has been commonly supposed that the reference is to the first month of the fortieth year, when the Israelites are thought to have arrived for the second time at Kadesh. Some, however, are of opinion that the journey is the same as that which is mentioned in Num_12:16, and in Deu_1:19; and that the arrival at Kadesh was on the first month of the third year, i.e., the year which followed the departure from Sinai, which departure took place on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year after the exodus.
And the people abode in Kadesh.—It is evident that the sojourn in Kadesh was a protracted one, whether Kadesh did, or did not serve as the head-quarters of the people from the second or third year of the exodus until that in which they entered into the land of Canaan. See Deu_1:46, where Moses describes the length of the sojourn in Kadesh by the words “many days,” the same words which he employs in Num_20:15 to denote the length of the sojourn in the land of Egypt. It cannot, however, be inferred from the simple use of the word which is here rendered abode that the sojourn at Kadesh at the beginning of the fortieth year was of long duration (see Jdg_11:17, where the same word is used). Hence no legitimate conclusion can be drawn from the use of this word respecting the reference of the verse to an arrival at Kadesh at the beginning of the third or of the fortieth year after the exodus. (See 20:14, and Note).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain Numbers 20
Numbers 20
"Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin, in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there." Verse 1.
Read full note →
The chapter which now opens before us furnishes a very remarkable record of wilderness life and experience. In it, we see Moses, the servant of God, passing through some of the most trying scenes of his eventful life. First of all, Miriam dies. The one whose voice was heard, amid the brilliant scenes of Exodus 15 chanting a hymn of victory, passes away, and her ashes are deposited in the wilderness of Kadesh. The timbrel is laid aside. The voice of song is hushed in the silence of death. She can no longer lead in the dance. She had sung sweetly, in her day; she had, very blessedly, seized the key note of that magnificent song of praise sung on the resurrection side of the Red Sea. Her charms embodied the great central truth of redemption. "Sing ye to the Lord. for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." This was, truly, a lofty strain. It was the suited utterance for the joyous occasion.
But now the prophetess passes off the scene, and the voice of melody is exchanged for the voice of murmuring. Wilderness life is becoming irksome. The trials of the desert put nature to the test; they bring out what is in the heart. Forty years’ toil and travail make a great change in people. It is very rare indeed to find a case in which the verdure and freshness of spiritual life are kept up, much less augmented, throughout all the stages of Christian life and warfare. It ought not to be such a rarity. It ought to be the very reverse, inasmuch as it is in the actual details, the stern realities of our path through this world, that we prove what God is. He, blessed be His name, takes occasion from the very trials of the way to make Himself known to us in all the sweetness and tenderness of love that knows no change. His loving kindness and tender mercy never fail. Nothing can exhaust those springs which are in the living God. He will be what He is, spite of all our naughtiness. God will be God, let man prove himself ever so faithless and faulty.
This is our comfort, our joy, and the source of our strength. We have to do with the living God. What a reality! Come what may, He will prove Himself equal to every emergency - amply sufficient "for exigence of every hour." His patient grace can bear with our manifold infirmities, failures, and shortcomings; and His strength is made perfect in our utter weakness. His faithfulness never fails. His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. Friends fail or pass away. Links of fond friendship are snapped in this cold, heartless world. Fellow-labourers part company. Miriams and Aarons die; but God remaineth. Here lies the deep secret of all true and solid blessedness. If we have the hand and the heart of the living God with us, we need not fear. If we can say, "The Lord is my shepherd," we can, assuredly add, "we shall not want."
Still there are the scenes of sorrow and trial in the desert; and we have to go through them. Thus it was with Israel, in the chapter before us. They were called to meet the keen blasts of the wilderness, and they met them with accents of impatience and discontent. "And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! And why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there? And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink." Verses 2-5.
This was a deeply trying moment to the spirit of Moses. We can form no conception of what it must have been to encounter six hundred thousand murmurers, and to be obliged to listen to their bitter invectives, and to hear himself charged with all the misfortunes which their own unbelief had conjured up before them. All this was no ordinary trial of patience; and, most assuredly, we need not marvel if that dear and honoured servant found the occasion too much for him. "And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them." Verse 6.
It is deeply touching to find Moses, again and again, on his face before God. It was a sweet relief, to make his escape from a tumultuous host, and betake himself to the only One whose resources were adequate to meet such an occasion. "They fell upon their faces: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them." They do not appear, on this occasion, to have attempted any reply to the people; "they went from the presence of the assembly" and cast themselves upon the living God. They could not possibly have done better. Who But the God of all grace could meet the ten thousand necessities of wilderness life? Well had Moses said, at the very beginning, "If thy presence go not with us, carry as not up hence." Assuredly, he was right and wise in so expressing himself. The divine presence was the only answer to the demand of such a congregation. But that presence was an all-sufficient answer. God’s treasury is absolutely inexhaustible. He can never fail a trusting heart. Let us remember this. God delights to be used. He never grows weary of ministering to the need of His people. If this were ever kept in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts, we should hear less of the accents of impatience and discontent, and more of the sweet language of thankfulness and praise. But, as we have had frequent occasion to remark, desert life tests every one. it proves what is in us; and, thanks be to God, it brings out what is in Him for us.
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink. and Moses took the rod from before the Lord as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock; and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly; and the congregation drank, and their beasts also." Verse 7-11.
Two objects, in the foregoing quotation, demand the readers attention, namely, "The Rock," and "The Rod." They both present Christ, most blessedly, to the soul; but in two distinct aspects. In 1 Corinthians 10: 4, we read, "They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ." This is Plain and positive. It leaves no room whatever for the exercise of the imagination. "That Rock was Christ" - Christ smitten for us.
Then, as regards "the rod," we must remember that it was not the rod of Moses - the rod of authority - the rod of power. This would not suit the occasion before us. It had done its work. It had smitten the rock once, and that was enough. This we learn from Exodus 17, where we read, "The Lord said onto Moses, go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river (see Ex. 7: 20), take in thine hand and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel."
Here we have a type of Christ smitten for us, by the hand of God, in judgement. The reader will note the expression, "Thy rod wherewith thou smotest the river." Why the river? Why should this particular stroke of the rod be referred to? Exodus 7: 20 furnishes the reply. "And be (Moses) lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood." It was the rod which turned the water into blood that was to smite "that Rock which was Christ" in order that streams of life and refreshment might flow for us.
Now, this smiting could only take place once. It is never to be repeated. "Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God." (Rom. 6: 9, 10) "But now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.....so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.’’ (Heb. 9: 26, 27) "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." 1 Peter 3: 18.
There can be no repetition of the death of Christ; and hence Moses was wrong in smiting the rock twice with his rod - wrong in smiting it at all. He was commanded to take "the rod, Aaron’s rod - the priestly rod, and speak to the rock. The atoning work is done, and now our great High Priest has passed into the heavens, there to appear in the presence of God for us, and the streams of spiritual refreshment flow to us, on the ground of accomplished redemption, and in connection with Christ’s priestly ministry, of which Aaron’s budding rod is the exquisite figure.
Hence, then, it was a grave mistake for Moses to smite the rock a second time - a mistake to use his rod in the matter at all. To have smitten with Aaron’s rod would, as we can easily understand, have spoiled its lovely blossom. A word would have sufficed, in connection with the rod of priesthood - the rod of grace. Moses failed to see this - failed to glorify God. He spoke unadvisedly with his lips; and as a consequence he was prohibited going over Jordan. His rod could not take the people over - for what could mere authority do with a murmuring host - and he was not suffered to go over himself because he failed to sanctify Jehovah in the eyes of the congregation.
But Jehovah took care of His own glory. He sanctified Himself before the people; and, notwithstanding their rebellious murmurings, and Moses’ sad mistake and failure, the congregation of the Lord received a gushing stream from the smitten rock.
Nor was this all. It was not merely that grace triumphed in furnishing Israel’s murmuring hosts with drink; but even in reference to Moses himself, it shines out most brilliantly, as we may see in Deuteronomy 34. It was grace that brought Moses to the top of Pisgah and showed him the land of Canaan from thence. It was grace that led Jehovah to provide a grave for His servant and bury him therein. It was better to see the land of Canaan, in company with God, than to enter it in company with Israel. And yet we must not forget that Moses was prevented entering the land because of the unadvised speaking. God, in government, kept Moses out of Canaan. God, in grace, brought Moses up to Pisgah. These two facts, in the history of Moses, illustrate, very forcibly, the distinction between grace and government - a subject of the deepest interest, and of great practical value. Grace pardons and blesses; but government takes its course. Let us ever remember this. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." This principle runs through all the ways of God in government, and nothing can be more solemn; nevertheless "grace reigns through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord." All praise to Him who is at once, the fountain and the channel of this grace!
From verses 14-20 of our chapter, we have the correspondence between Moses and the king of Edom. It is instructive and interesting to notice the style of each, and to compare it with the history given in Genesis 32, 33. Esau had a serious grudge against Jacob; and albeit, through the direct interposition of God, he was not suffered to touch a hair of his brother’s head, still, on the other hand, Israel must not meddle with Esau’s possessions. Jacob had supplanted Esau; and Israel must not molest Edom. "Command thou the people, saying, Ye are to pass through the coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir; and they shall be afraid of you: take ye good heed unto yourselves therefore. Meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth, because I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession. Ye shall buy meat of them for money, that ye may eat; and ye shall also buy water of them for money, that ye may drink. (Deut. 2: 4-6.) Thus we see that the same God who would not suffer Esau to touch Jacob, in Genesis 33, now will not suffer Israel to touch Edom, in Numbers 20.
The closing paragraph of Numbers 20 is deeply touching. We shall not quote it, but the reader should refer to it, and compare it carefully with the scene in Exodus 4: 1-17. Moses had deemed Aaron’s companionship indispensable; but he afterwards found him to be a sore thorn in his side, and here he is compelled to strip him of his robes and see him gathered to his fathers. All this is very admonitory, in whatever way we view it, whether as regards Moses or Aaron. We have already referred to this instructive piece of history, and therefore we shall not dwell upon it here; but may the good Lord engrave its solemn lesson deeply upon the tablets of our hearts!
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain THE LAST MARCH: FROM KADESH TO HOR (verses 22,…
THE LAST MARCH: FROM KADESH TO HOR (verses 22, and seem intended to mark the period of reassembly after the dispersion of nearly thirty eight years. Probably a portion of the tribes had visited Kadesh many times during those years, and perhaps it had never been wholly abandoned. Into the desert of Zin, i.e., if the western site be maintained for Kadesh, the Wady Murreh. See the note on Kadesh. In the first month. In the month Abib (Nisan), the vernal month, when there was "much grass" (cf. Joh_6:10) in places at other seasons desert, and when traveling was most easy. From comparison of Num_14:33 Num_33:38 and the sequence of the narrative, it appears to have, been the first month of the fortieth, and last year of wandering, Then it was that they reassembled in the same neighbourhood from whence they had dispersed so long before. (see the note before Nu 15) And the people abode (bveye Septuagint, katemeinen ) in Kadesh. From the date given in Num_33:38 it would seem that they remained three or four months in Kadesh on this occasion. This delay may have been occasioned partly by the ingraining for Miriam (cf. verse 29), and partly by the necessity of awaiting answers from Edom and from Moab (see on verse 14). And Miriam died there, and was buried. Nothing could be more brief and formal than this mention of the death of one who had played a considerable part in Israel, and had perhaps wished to play a more considerable part. It can scarcely, however, be doubted that her death in the unlovely wilderness was a punishment like the death of her brothers. There is no reason whatever to suppose that she had any part in the rebellion of Kadesh, or that the sentence of death there pronounced included her; she was indeed at this time advanced in years, rut that would not in itself account for the fact that she died in exile; it is, no doubt, to the arrogance and rebellion recorded in Nu 12 that we must look for the true explanation of her untimely end.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain The people abode in Kadesh.
Num_20:1
The people abode in Kadesh.
Read full note →
The new departure
The fortieth year is now running its course. The time of the curse has nearly expired. And now preparations may be begun for entering a second time on the march to Canaan, where a new generation must vindicate the claim of Israel to be indeed the hosts of the Lord, by taking possession of the land of promise. It was at Kadesh that the sentence had been pronounced which doomed their fathers to these dreary years of wandering. It is at Kadesh again that the camp is reorganised. It seems likely that during the interval there was no definite aim or object before the people, so that they moved about as suited their convenience or necessities, very much as the wandering tribes of the desert do still. This would lead to a relaxation of discipline and order in the camp, and more or less scattering of the people. Their unity was indeed to a certain extent kept up, and their marching orders given as of old, probably at long intervals. So at least we would infer from the itinerary in chap. 33.; but there must have been no little disorganisation and dispersion, rendering it necessary that there should be a reassembling of the forces. For this purpose no place could be better or more appropriate than Kadesh, not only because it must have been so familiar to all, but also because, by making it their point of departure, they resumed the thread that had been broken by the unbelief of their fathers. The total loss of the long interval of time, moreover, is more distinctly marked by the gathering of the people together at the old halting-place. There is a striking contrast between the new departure and the old. The first began with the numbering and mustering of the armed men, and all the bustle, activity, and energy of a youthful host setting out to victory. The second seems to have a much less hopeful beginning. The twentieth of Numbers is one of the saddest chapters in the book. It begins with the death of her who had been the leader in the song of victory on the shores of the Red Sea. It ends with the death of him who had so long been the honoured representative of Israel in the Holy and the Most Holy Place. And, between the two, we have the old story of murmuring on the part of the people, and mercy on the part of God, but with this sad addition, that Moses himself has a fall--a fall so serious that it leads to his own, as well as Aarons, exclusion from the land of promise. It seems a hopeless beginning indeed. But was there not something hopeful in its very hopelessness? Recall that scene of wrestling at Peniel, when the patriarch Jacob gained the new name of Israel. How did he gain it? By his own strength? Nay. It was through weakness that he was made strong. It was when his power was utterly broken that his hope of victory began. This will illustrate what we mean when we say that there is something hopeful in the very hopelessness of this chapter. And this prepares the way for the great lesson of the next chapter, which may be expressed in the very words which follow the passage just quoted from the 146th Psalm, Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. (J. M. Gibson, D. D.)
Miriam died there.
The death of Miriam
I. Death terminates the most protracted life. Miriam must have been about 130 years old when she died.
II. Death terminates the most eventful life.
1. The girl watching over the life of her infant brother (Exo_3:4-8).
2. The experienced woman sharing in the interest and action of the stirring events which led to the great emancipation from Egypt.
3. The prophetess leading the exultant songs and dances of a triumphant people (Exo_15:20-21).
4. The envious woman aspiring after equality with, and speaking against her greater brother (Num_12:1-2).
5. The guilty woman smitten with leprosy because of the sin (Num_12:9-10).
6. The leprous woman healed in answer to the prayer of the brother whom she had spoken against (Num_12:13-15). The most stirring and eventful life is closed by death, as well as the quiet and monotonous one.
III. Death terminates the most distinguished life.
1. Miriam was distinguished by her gifts. Prophetic gifts arc ascribed to her. Miriam, the prophetess, is her acknowledged title (Exo_15:20).
2. Miriam was distinguished by her position.
IV. Death, by reason of sin, sometimes terminates life earlier than it otherwise would have done.
V. death sometimes terminates life with suggestions of a life beyond. It was so in the case of Miriam. Can we think that the gifts with which she was so richly endowed, and the treasures of experience which in her long and eventful life she had gathered, were all lost at death? This would be in utter opposition to the analogy of the Divine arrangements in the universe. (W. Jones.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Numbers 20
SORROW AND FAILURE AT KADESH
Numbers 20
Read full note →
THERE is a mustering at Kadesh of the scattered tribes, for now the end of the period of wandering approaches, and the generation that has been disciplined in the wilderness must prepare for a new advance. The spies who searched Canaan were sent from Kadesh, {Num_13:26} to which, in the second year from the exodus, the tribes had penetrated. Now, in the first month of the fortieth year it would seem, Kadesh is again the headquarters. The adjacent district is called the desert of Zin. Eastward, across the great plain of the Arabah, reaching from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf, are the mountains of Seir, the natural rampart of Edom. To the head of the Gulf at Elath the distance is some eighty miles in a straight line southward; to the southern end of the Dead Sea it is about fifty miles. Kadesh is almost upon the southern border of Canaan; but the way of the Negeb is barred by defeat, and Israel must enter the Promised Land by another route. In preparation for the advance the tribes gather from the wadies and plateaus in which they have been wandering, and at Kadesh or near it the earlier incidents of this chapter occur.
First among them is the death of Miriam. She has survived the hardships of the desert and reached a very great age. Her time of influence and vigour past, all the joys of life now in the dim memories of a century, she is glad, no doubt, when the call comes. It was her happiness once to share the enthusiasm of Moses and to sustain the faith of the people in their leader and in God. But any service of this kind she could render has been left behind. For some time she has been able only now and then with feeble steps to move to the tent of meeting that she might assure herself of the welfare of Moses. The tribes will press on to Canaan, but she shall never see it.
How is a life like this of Miriams to be reckoned? Take into account her faith and her faithfulness; but remember that both were maintained with some intermixture of poor egotism; that while she helped Moses she also claimed to rival and rebuke him; that while she served Jehovah it was with some of the pride of a prophetess. Her devotion, her endurance, the long interest in her brothers work, which indeed led to the great error of her life-these were her virtues, the old great virtues of a woman. So far as opportunity went she doubtless did her utmost, with some independence of thought and decision of character. Even though she gave way to jealousy and passed beyond her right, we must believe that, on the whole, she served her generation in loyalty to the best she knew, and in the fear of the Most High. But into what a strange disturbed current of life was her effort thrown! Downcast, sorely burdened women, counting for very little when they were cheerful or when they complained, heard Miriams words and took them into their narrow thoughts, to resent her enthusiasm, perhaps, when she was enthusiastic, to grudge her the power she enjoyed, which to herself seemed so slight. In the camp generally she had respect, and perhaps, once and again, she was able to reconcile to Moses and to one another those whose quarrels threatened the common peace. When she was put forth from the camp in the shame of her leprosy, all were affected, and the march was stayed till her time of separation was over. Was she one of those women whose lot it is to serve others all their lives and to have little for their service? Still, like many another, she helped to make Israel, Of good and evil, of Divine elements and some that are anything but Divine, lives are made up. And although we cannot gather the results of any one and tell its worth, the stream of being retains and the unerring judgment of God accepts whatever is sincere and good. Miriam from first to last fills but a few lines of sacred history; yet of her life, as of others, more has to be told; the end did not come when she died at Kadesh and was buried outside Canaan.
Spread through a diversified and not altogether barren region, over many square miles, the tribes have been able during the thirty-seven, years to provide themselves with water. Gathered more closely now, when the dry season begins they are in want. And at once complaints are renewed. Nor can we wonder much. In flaming sunshine, in the parched air of the heights and the stifling heat of the narrow valleys, the cattle gasping and many of them dying, the children crying m vain for water, the little that is to be had, hot and almost putrid, carefully divided, yet insufficient to give each family a little, -the people might well lament their apparently inevitable fate. It may be said, "They should have confided in God." But while that might apply in ordinary circumstances, would not be out of place if the whole history were ideal, the reality, once understood, forbids so easy a condemnation of unbelief. Nothing is more terrible to endure, nothing more fitted to make strong men weep or turn them into savage critics of a leader and of Providence, than to see their children in the extremity of want which they cannot relieve. And a leader like Moses, patient as he may have been of other complaints, should have been most patient of this. When the people chode with him and said, "Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! And why have ye brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness, that we should die, we and our cattle?" they ought surely to have been met with pity and soothing words.
It is indeed a tragedy we are to witness when we come to the rock; and one element of it is the old age and the weary spirit of the leader. Who can tell what vexed his soul that day? how many cares and anxieties burdened the mind that was clear yet, but not so tolerant, perhaps, as once it had been? The years of Moses, his long and arduous service of the people, are not remembered as they ought to be. Even in their extremity the men of the tribes ought to have appealed to their great chief with all respect, instead of breaking in upon him with reproaches. Was no experience sufficient for these people? After the discipline of the wilderness, was the new generation, like that which had died, still a mere horde, ungrateful, rebellious? From the leaders point of view this thought could not fail to arise, and the old magnanimity did not drive it away.
Another point is the forbearance of Jehovah, who has no anger with the people. The Divine Voice commands Moses to take his rod and go forth to the rock and speak to it before the assembly. This does not fall in with Moses mood. Why is God not indignant with the men of this new generation who seize the first opportunity to begin their murmuring? Relapsing from his high inspiration to a poor human level, Moses begins to think that Jehovah, whose forgiveness be has often implored on Israels behalf, is too ready now to forgive. It is a failing of the best men thus to stand for the prerogative of God more than God Himself; that is, to mistake the real point of the circumstances they judge and the Divine will they should interpret. The story of Jonah shows the prophet anxious that Nineveh, the inveterate foe of Israel, the centre of proud, God-defying idolatry, should be destroyed. Does God wish it to be spared, to repent and obtain forgiveness? So does not Jonah. His creed is one of doom for wickedness. He resents the Divine mercy and, in effect, exalts himself above the Most High. In like temper is Moses when he goes out followed by the crowd. There is the rock from which water shall be made to flow. But with the thought in his mind that the people do not deserve Gods help, Moses takes the affair upon himself. The tragedy is fulfilled when his own feelings guide him more than the Divine patience, his own displeasure more than the Divine compassion; and with the words on his lips, "Hear now, ye rebels: shall we bring you forth water out of this rock?" he smites it twice with his rod.
For the moment, forgetting Jehovah the merciful, Moses will himself act God; and he misrepresents God, dishonours God, as every one who forgets Him is sure to do. Is he confident in the power of his wonder-working rod? Does he wish to show that its old virtue remains? He will use it as if he were smiting the people as well as the rock. Is he willing that this thirsting multitude should drink? Yet he is determined to make them feel that they offend by the urgency with which they press upon him for help. There have been crises in the lives of leaders of men when, with all the teaching of the past to inspire them, they should have risen to a faith in God far greater than they ever exercised before; and more or less they have failed. This is not the will of Providence, they have thought, though they should have known that it was. They have said, "Advance: but God goes not with you," when they should have seen the heavenly light moving on. So Moses failed. He touched his limit; and it was far short of that breadth of compassion which belongs to the Most Merciful. He stood as God, with the rod in his hand to give the water, but with the condemnation upon his lips which Jehovah did not speak.
In this mood of assumed majesty, of moral indignation which has a personal source, with an air of superiority not the simplicity of inspiration, a man may do what he will for ever regret, may betray a habit of self-esteem which has been growing upon him and will be his ruin if it is not checked. In the strong mind of Moses there had lain the germs of hauteur. The early upbringing in an Egyptian court could not fail to leave its mark, and the dignity of a dictator could not be sustained, after the anxieties of the first two years in the desert, without some slight growth of a tendency or disposition to look down on people so spiritless, and play among them the part of Providence, the decrees of which Moses had so often interpreted. But pride, even beginning to show itself towards men, is an aping of God. Unconsciously the mind that looks down on the crowd falls into the trick of a superhuman claim. Moses, great as he is, without personal ambition, the friend of every Israelite, reaches unaware the hour when a habit long suppressed lifts itself into power. He feels himself the guardian of justice, a critic not only of the lives of men but of the attitude of Jehovah towards them. It is but for an hour; yet the evil is done. What appears to the uplifted mind justice, is arrogance. What is meant for a defence of Jehovahs right, is desecration of the highest office a man can hold under the Supreme. The words are spoken, the rock is struck in pride; and Moses has fallen.
Think of the realisation of this which comes when the flush of hasty resentment dies, and the true self which had been suppressed revives in humble thought. "What have I done?" is the reflection-"What have I said? My rod, my hand, my will, what are they? My indignation! Who gave me the right to be indignant? A king against whom they have revolted! A guardian of the Divine honour! Alas! I have denied Jehovah. I, who stood for Him in my pride, have defamed Him in my vanity. The people who murmured, whom I rebuked, have sinned less than I. They distrusted God, I have declared Him unmerciful, and thereby sown the seeds of distrust. Now I, too, am barred from Israels inheritance. Unworthy of the promise, I shall never cross the border of Gods land. Aaron my brother, we are the transgressors. Because we have not honoured God to sanctify Him in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore we shall not bring this assembly unto the land He gives them." By the lips of Moses himself the oracle was given. It was tragical indeed.
But how could the brothers who had yielded to this dictatorial hierarchical temper be men of God again, fit for another stroke of work for Him, unless, coming forth into action, their pride had disclosed itself, and with whatever bad result shown its real nature? We deplore the pride; we almost weep to see its manifestation; we hear with sorrow the judgment of Moses and Aaron. But well is it that the worst should come to light, that the evil thing should be seen, God-dishonouring, sacrilegious; should be judged, repented of, punished. Moses must "feel himself and find the blessedness of being little." "By that sin fell the angels," that sin unconfessed.
Here in open sight of all, in hearing of all, Moses lays down the godhead he had assumed, acknowledges unworthiness, takes his place humbly among those who shall not inherit the promise. The worst of all happens to a man when his pride remains unrevealed, uncondemned; grows to more and more, and he never discovers that he is attempting to carry himself with the air of Providence, of Divinity.
The error of Moses was great, yet only showed him to be a man of like passions with ourselves. Who can realise the mercy and lovingkindness that are in the heart of God, the danger of limiting the Holy One of Israel? The murmuring of the Israelites against Jehovah had often been rebuked, had often brought them into condemnation. Moses had once and again intervened as their mediator and saved them from death. Remembering the times when he had to speak of Jehovahs anger, he feels himself justified in his own resentment. He thought the murmuring was over; it is resumed unexpectedly, the same old complaints are made and he is carried away by what appears zeal for Jehovah. Yet there is in him even, the man, much more in God, a better than the seeming best. Pathetic indeed is it to find Moses judged as one who has failed from the high place he could have reached by a final effort of self-mastery, one more generous thought. And we see him fail at a point where we often fail. Sternly to judge our own right of condemning before we speak sternly in the name of God; neither to do nor say anything which implies the assumption of knowledge, justice, charity we do not possess-how few of us are in these respects blameless for a day! Far back in sacred history this high duty is presented so as to evoke the best endeavour of the Christian soul and warn it from the place of failure.
There is preserved in the Book of Exodus (chapter 36) a list of the Kings of Edom reaching down apparently to about the establishment of the monarchy of Israel. Recent archeology sees no reason to question the genuineness of this historical notice or the names of the Dukes of Edom given in the same passage. With varying boundaries the region over which they ruled extended southward from Moab and the Dead Sea as far as the Elanitic Gulf. Kadesh, considerably west of the Arabah, is described as being on its uttermost border. But the district inhabited by the Edomites proper was a narrow strip of rugged country eastward of the range of Mount Seir. One pass giving entrance to the heart of Edom led by the base of Mount Hot towards Selah, afterwards called Petra, which occupied a fine but narrow valley in the heart of broken mountains. To reach the south of Moab the Israelites desired probably to take a road a good deal farther north. But this would have led them by Bozrah the capital, and the king who reigned at the time refused them the route. The message sent him in Moses name was friendly, even appealing. The brotherhood of Edom and Israel was claimed; the sore travail of the tribes in Egypt and the deliverance wrought by Jehovah were given as reasons; promise was made that no harm should be done to field or vineyard: Israel would journey by the kings way, turning neither to the right nor the left. When the first request was refused Moses added that if his people drank of the water while passing through Edom they would pay for it. The appeal, however, was made in vain. An attempt to advance without permission was repelled. An armed force barred the way, and most reluctantly the desert road was again taken.
We can easily understand the objection of the King of Edom. Many of the defiles through which the main road wound were not adapted for the march of a great multitude. The Israelites could scarcely have gone through Edom without injuring the fields and vineyards; and though the undertaking was given in good faith by Moses, how could he answer for the whole of that undisciplined host he was leading towards Canaan? The safety of Edom lay in denying to other peoples access to its strongholds. The difficulty of approaching them was their main security. Israel might go quietly through the land now; but its armies might soon return with hostile intent. Water, too, was very precious in some parts of Edom. Enough was stored in the rainy season to supply the wants of the inhabitants; beyond that there was none to spare, and for this necessary of life money was no equivalent. A multitude travelling with cattle would have made scarcity, or famine, -might have left the region almost desolate. With the information they had, Moses and Joshua may have believed that there were no insuperable difficulties. Yet the best generalship might have been unequal to the task of controlling Israel in the passes and among the cultivated fields of that singular country.
There is no need to go back on the history of Jacob and Esau in order to account for the apparent incivility of the King of Edom to the Israelites and Moses. That quarrel had surely been long forgotten! But we need not wonder if the kinship of the two peoples was no availing argument in the case. Those were not times when covenants like that proposed could be easily trusted, nor was Israel on an expedition the nature of which could reassure the Idumaeans. And we have parallels enough in modern life to show that from the only point of view the king could take he was amply justified. There are demands men make on others without perceiving how difficult it will be to grant them, demands on time, on means, on good-will, demands that would involve moral as well as material sacrifice. The foolish intrusions of well-meaning people may be borne for a time, but there is a limit beyond which they cannot be suffered. Our whole life cannot be exposed to the derangements of every scheme-maker, every claimant. If we are to do our own work well, it is absolutely necessary that a certain space shall be jealously guarded, where the gains of thought may be kept safely and the ideas revealed to us may be developed. That any ones life should be open so that travellers, even with some right of close fraternity, may pass through the midst of it, drink of the wells, and trample down the fields of growing purpose or ripening thought, this is not required. Good-will makes an open gate; Christian feeling makes one still wider and bids many welcome. But he who would keep his heart in fruitfulness must be careful to whom he grants admission. There is beginning to be a sort of jealousy of anyones right to his own reserve. It is not a single Israel approaching from the West, but a score, with their different schemes, who come from every side demanding right of way and even of abode. Each presses a Christian claim on whatever is wanted of our hospitality. But if all had what they desire there would be no personal life left.
On the other hand, some whose highways are broad, whose wells and streams are overflowing, whose lives are not fully engaged, show themselves exclusive and inhospitable-like those proprietors of vast moors who refuse a path to the waterfall or the mountain-top. Without Edoms excuse, some modern Idumaeans warn every enterprise off their bounds. Neither brotherhood nor any other claim is acknowledged. They would find advantage, not injury, in the visit of those who bring new enthusiasms and ideas to bear on existence. They would learn of other aims than occupy them, a better hope than they possess. Their sympathy would be enlisted in heavenly or humane endeavours, and new alliances would quicken as well as broaden their life. But they will not listen; they continue selfish to the end. Against all such Christianity has to urge the law of brotherhood and of sacrifice.
We have assumed that Kadesh was on the western side of the Arabah, and it is necessary to take Num_20:20 as referring to an incident that occurred after the Israelites had crossed the valley. Not otherwise can we explain how they came to encamp among the mountains on the eastern side. The repulse must have been sustained by the tribes after they had left Kadesh and penetrated some distance into the northern defiles of Idumaea. Bozrah, the capital, appears to have been situated about half way between Petra and the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, and a force issuing from that stronghold would divert the march southward so that the Israelites could safely encamp only when they reached the open plain near Mount Hor. Hither therefore they retreated: and here it was that Moses and Aaron were parted. The time had come for the high priest to be gathered to his people.
Scarcely any locality in the whole track of the wandering is better identified than this. From the plain of the Arabah the mountains rise in a range parallel to the valley, in ridges of sandstone, limestone, and chalk, with cliffs and peaks of granite. The defile that leads by Mount Hor to Petra is peculiarly grand, for here the range attains its greatest height. "Through a narrow ravine," says one traveller, "we ascended a steep mountain side, amid a splendour of colour from bare rock or clothing verdure, and a solemnity of light on the broad summits, of shade in the profound depths - a memory forever. It was the same narrow path through which in oldtimes had passed other trains of camels laden with the merchandise of India, Arabia, and Egypt. And thus having ascended, we had next a long descent to the foot of Mount Hor, which stands isolated." The mountain rises about four thousand feet above the Arabah and has a peculiar double crest. On its green pastures there graze flocks of sheep and goats; and inhabited caves-used perhaps since the days of the old Horites-are to be seen here and there. The ascent of the mountain is aided by steps cut in the rock, "indeed a tolerably complete winding staircase," for the chapel or mosque on the summit, said to cover the grave of Aaron, is a notable Arab sanctuary, resorted to by many pilgrims. "From the roof of the tomb-now only an ordinary square building with a dome-northward and southward, a hilly desert; eastward, the mountains of Edom, within which Petra lies hid; westward, the desert of the Arabah, or wilderness of Zin; beyond that, the desert of Et-Tih; beyond that again, in the far horizon, the blue-tinted hills of the Land of Promise."
Such is the mountain at the foot of which Israel lay encamped when the Lord said unto Moses, "Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up unto Mount Hor; and strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son: and Aaron shall be gathered unto his people and shall die there." We imagine the sorrowful gaze of the multitude following the three climbers, the aged brothers who had borne so long the burden and heat of the day, and Eleazar, already well advanced in life, who was to be invested with his fathers office. Coming soon after the death of Miriam, this departure of Aaron broke sharply one other link that still bound Israel with its past. The old times were receding, the new had not yet come into sight.
The life of a good man may close mournfully. While some in leaving the world cross cheerfully the river beyond which the smiling fields of the heavenly land are full in view, others there are who, even with the faith of the Conqueror of death to sustain them, have no gladdening prospect at the last. Only from a distance Aaron saw the Land of Promise; from so great a distance that its beauty and fruitfulness could not be realised. The sullen gleam of the Lake of Sodom, lying in its grim hollow, was visible away to the north. Besides that the dim eyes could make out little. But Edom lay below; and the tribes would have a great circuit round that inhospitable land, would have to traverse another desert beyond the horizon to the east, ere they could reach Moab and draw near to Canaan. A true patriot, Aaron would think more of the people than of himself. And the confidence he had in the friendliness of God and the wisdom of his brother would scarcely dispel the shadow that settled on him as he forecast the journey of the tribes and saw the difficulties they were yet to meet. So not a few are called away from the world when the great ends for which they have toiled are still remote. The cause of liberty or of reformation with which life has been identified may even appear farther from success than years before. Or again, the close of life may be darkened by family troubles more pressing than any that were experienced earlier. A man may be heavily burdened without distrusting God on his own account, or doubting that in the long run all shall be well. He may be troubled because the immediate prospect shows no escape from painful endurance for those he loves. He does not sorrow perhaps that he has found the promises of life to be illusory; but he is grieved for dear friends who must yet make that discovery, who shall travel many a league and never win the battle or pass beyond the wilderness.
The mind of Aaron as he went to his death was darkened by the consciousness of a great failure. Kadesh lay westward across the valley, and the thought of what took place there was with the brothers as they climbed Mount Hor and stood upon its summit. They had repented, but they had not yet forgiven themselves. How could they, when they saw in the temper of the people too plain proofs that their lese-majesty had borne evil fruit? It needs much faith to be sure that God will remedy the evil we have done; and so long as the means cannot be seen, the shadow of self-reproach must remain. Many a good man, climbing the last slope, feels the burden of transgressions committed long before. He has done his utmost to restore the defences of truth and rebuild the altars of witness which in thoughtless youth or proud manhood he cast down. But circumstances have hindered the work of reparation; and many who saw his sin have passed far beyond the reach of his repentance. The thought of past faults may sadly obscure the close of a Christian life. The end would indeed be hopeless often were it not for trust in the omnipotent grace which brings again that which was driven away and binds up that which was broken. Yet since the very work of God and the victory of Christ are made more difficult by things a believer has done, is it possible that he should always have happy recollections of the past as life draws near its end?
It was no doubt honourable to Aaron that his death was appointed to be on that mountain in Seir. Old as he was, he would never think of complaining that he was ordained to climb it. Yet to the tired limbs it was a steep, difficult path, a way of sorrow. Here, also, we find resemblance to the close of many a worthy life. High office in the Church has been well served, overflowing wealth has been used in beneficence; but at the last reverses have come. The man who was always prosperous is now stripped of his possessions. Darkened in mind by successive losses, bereaved of friends and of power, he has to climb a dreary mountain-path to the sharp end. It may be really honourable to such a man that God has thus appointed his death to be not in the midst of luxury, but on the rugged peak of loss. Understanding things aright, he should say: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." But if dependence is felt as shame, if he who gave freely to others feels it a sore thing to receive from others, who can have the heart to blame the good man because he does not triumph here? And if he has to climb alone, no Eleazar with him, scarcely one human aid, what shall we say? Now life must gird itself and go whither it would not. Sad is the journey, but not into night. The Christian does not impeach Divine providence nor grieve that earthly good is finally taken away. Though his life has been in his generosity, not in his possessions, yet he will confess that the last bitter trial is needful to the perfecting of faith.
Should the believer triumph over death through Christ? It is his privilege; but some display unwarranted complacency. They have confidence in the work of Christ; they boast that they rest everything on Him. But is it well with them if they have no sorrow because of days and years that ran to waste? Is it well with them if they deplore no failure in Christian effort when the reason is that they never gave heart and strength to any difficult task? Who can be satisfied with the apparent victory of faith at the last of one who never had high hopes for himself and others, and therefore was never disappointed? Better the sorrowful ending to a life that has dared great things and been defeated, that has cherished a pure ideal and come painfully short of it, than the exultation of those who even as Christians have lived to themselves.
Perhaps the circumstances that attended the death of Aaron were to him the finest discipline of life. Climbing the steep slope at the command of God, would he not feel himself brought into a closer relation with the Eternal Will? Would he not feel himself separated from the world and gathered up into the quiet massiveness of life with Him who is from everlasting to everlasting? The years of a high priest, dealing constantly with sacred things and symbols, might easily fall into a routine not more helpful to generous thought and spiritual exaltation than the habits of secular life. One might exist among sacrifices and purifications till the mind became aware of nothing beyond ritual and its orderly performance. True, this had not been the case with Aaron during a considerable portion of the time since he began his duties. There had been many events by means of which Jehovah broke in upon the priests with His great demands. But thirty-seven years had been comparatively uneventful. And now the little world of camp and tabernacle court, the sacred shrine with its ark, the symbolic dwelling-place of God, must have their contrast in the broad spaces filled with gleaming light, the blue vault, the widespread hills and valleys, the heavens which are Jehovahs throne, the earth which is His footstool. The bustle of Israels little life is left behind for the calm of the mountain land. The high priest finds another vestibule of the dwelling of Jehovah than that which he has been accustomed to enter with sprinkled blood and the pungent fumes of the incense.
Is it not good thus to be called away from the business of the world, immersed in which every day men have lost the due proportions of things, both of what is earthly and what is spiritual? They have to leave the computations recorded in their books, and what bulks largely in the gossip of the way and the news of the town; they are to climb where greater spaces can he seen, and human life, both as brief and as immortal, shall be understood in its relations to God. Often those who have this call addressed to them are most unwilling to obey. It is painful to lose the old standards of proportion, to hear no longer the familiar noise of wheels, to see no machinery, no desks, no ledgers, to read no newspapers, to have the quiet, the slow-moving days, the moonless or moonlit nights. But if reflection follows, as it should, and brings wisdom, the change has saved a man who was near to being lost. The things he toiled for once, as well as the things he dreaded, -that success, this breath of adverse opinion, -seem little in the new light, scarcely disturb the new atmosphere. One thus called apart with God, learning what are the real elements of life, may look with pity on his former self, yet gather out of the experience that had small value, for the most part, here and there a jewel of price. And the wise, becoming wiser, will feel preparation made for the greater existence that lies beyond.
Moses accompanied his brother to the mountain top, by his hands, with all considerateness, the priestly robes were taken from Aarons shoulders and put on Eleazar. The true friend he had all along relied upon was with the dying man at the last, and closed his eyes. In this there was a palliation of the decree under which it would have been terrible to suffer alone; yet in the end the loneliness of death had to he felt. We know a Friend who passed through death for us, and made a way into the higher life, but still we have our dread of the solitude. How much heavier must it have weighed when no clear hope of immortality shone upon the hill. The vastness of nature was around the dying priest of Israel, his face was turned to the skies. But the thrill of Divine love we find in the touch of Christ did not reassure him. "These all received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect."
Eleazar followed Aaron and took up the work of the priesthood, not less ably, let us believe, yet not precisely with the same spirit, the same endowments. And indeed to have one in all respects like Aaron would not have served. The new generation, in new circumstances, needs a new minister. Office remains; but, as history moves on, it means always something different. When the hour comes that requires a clear step to be taken away from old notions and traditions of duty, neither he who holds the office nor those to whom he has ministered should complain or doubt. It is not good that one should cling to work merely because he has served well and may still seem able to serve; often it is the case that before death commands a change the time for one has come. Even the men who are most useful to the world, Paul, Apollos, Luther, do not die too soon. It may appear to us that a man who has done noble work has no successor. When, for instance, England loses its Dr. Arnold, Stanley, Lightfoot, and we look in vain for one to whom the robes are becoming, we have to trust that by some education they did not foresee the Church has to be perfected. The same theory, nominally, is not the same when others undertake to apply it. The same ceremonies have another meaning when performed by other hands. There are ways to the full fruition of Christs government which go as far about as Israels to Canaan round the land of Moab, for a time as truly retrogressive. But the great Leader, the one High Priest of the new covenant, never fails His Church or His world, and the way that does not hasten, as well as that which makes straight for the goal, is within His purpose, leads to the fulfilment among men of His mediatorial design.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain We now enter upon the narrative of the third…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
We now enter upon the narrative of the third and last stage of the journey of Israel from Sinai to the Promised Land: this narrative is given in this and the following chapter. This part of the journey commenced at Kadesh, was continued round the land of Edom (Num_21:4), and ended at the heights of Pisgah, in the country, or fields of Moab (Num_21:20), near the Dead Sea and the Jordan. The events of the Journey seem to be arranged “rather in a classified order than in one that is strictly chronological.” Thus the attack upon Israel by the Canaanitish king of Arad (Num_21:1-3) was made during the march from Kadesh to Mount Hor. Chronologically Keil and Del. would place the brief narrative between the first and second clause of Num_20:22 of chap. 20.
Read full note →
Num_20:1. The whole congregation. Probably during the time of their penal wanderings, nearly thirty-eight years, “the congregation” was to some extent broken up and scattered abroad in the wilderness of Paran, so as to facilitate the pasturage of the flocks and herds. Now “the whole congregation” again assembles in the same locality where the sentence of the wandering had been passed upon them.
The desert of Zin (see notes on chaps. Num_12:16; Num_13:21).
In the first month, of the fortieth year from the Exodus (comp. Num_20:22-28 with Num_33:38).
Kadesh (see notes on Num_13:26).
Num_20:3. When our brethren died before the Lord. It is uncertain to what deaths they refer. Knobel supposes that the reference is to Korah and his company. Keil and Del. say that “the reference is to those who had died one by one during the thirty-seven years.”
Num_20:6. They fell upon their faces (comp. chaps, Num_14:5; Num_16:4).
The glory of the Lord appeared unto them (comp. chaps. Num_14:10; Num_16:19).
Num_20:8. Take the rod. “Not the budding rod of Num_17:7, but that with which the miracles in Egypt had been wrought, and which had been used on a similar occasion at Rephidim, Exo_17:5, sqq.”—Speaker’s Comm.
The rock. “The word always used for ‘the rock’ of Kadesh, in describing the second supply of water, is ‘sela’ or ‘cliff,’ in contradistinction to the usual word ‘tzur’—‘rock,’ which is no less invariably applied to ‘the rock’ of Horeb—the scene of the first supply. It may be difficult to determine the relative meaning of the two words. But it is almost certain that of the two, ‘sela,’ like our word ‘cliff,’ is the grander and more abrupt feature.”—Stanley. Sinai and Pal.
The rock before their eyes. “To the first rock in front of them, and standing in their sight.” M. Nachmanides.
Num_20:9. Moses took the rod from before the Lord. The rod seems to have been laid up in the sanctuary, hence it is said to be taken “from before the Lord.”
Num_20:10-11. This miraculous supply of water from the “cliff” is different from that from the rock (Exo_17:1-7). “The first happened in the first year of the journey of the Israelites out of Egypt; this, when their journey was about to terminate, thirty-nine years after their departure. The first was an occasion to Moses of obeying punctually the orders of God; this is narrated as a sorrowful period, in which this legislator lost sight of the great motives which ought to have induced him to believe what God had spoken. The first happened in the desert of Sin on the mountain of Horeb; this in the desert of Zin on the frontier of Idumea.”—Saurin.
Num_20:10. Hear now, ye rebels, &c. (comp. Psa_106:33).
Num_20:12. Because ye believed Me not, &c. “What was the offence for which Moses was excluded from the Promised Land? It appears to have consisted in some or all of the following particulars:
1. God had commanded him (Num_20:8) to take the rod in his hand, and go and SPEAK TO THE ROCK, and it should give forth water. It seems Moses did not think speaking would be sufficient, therefore he smote the rock without any command so to do.
2. He did this twice, which certainly in this case indicated a great perturbation of spirit, and want of attention to the presence of God.
3. He permitted his spirit to be carried away by a sense of the people’s disobedience, and thus, being provoked, he was led to speak unadvisedly with his lips: ‘Hear now, ye REBELS’ (Num_20:10).
4. He did not acknowledge GOD in the miracle which was about to be wrought, but took the honour to himself and Aaron: ‘Must WE fetch you water out of this rock?’ Thus it plainly appears that they did not properly believe in God and did not honour Him in the sight of the people; for in their presence they seem to express a doubt whether the thing could be possibly done. As Aaron appears to have been consenting in the above particulars, therefore he is also excluded from the Promised Land.”—A. Clarke, LL.D.
Num_20:13. Meribah, i.e., strife. In Num_27:14, it is spoken of as “Meribah in Kadesh,” to distinguish it from Meribah in Horeb (Exo_17:7).
He was sanctified in them. He vindicated His own sanctity by putting to shame the unbelieving murmuring of the people by the miraculous supply of water, and by punishing Moses and Aaron for their unbelief.
Num_20:14. Thy brother Israel. The Edomites were descendants of Esau, the twin brother of Jacob or Israel.
Num_20:16. Sent an angel. “Cf. Exo_14:19. The term is to be understood as importing generally the supernatural guidance under which Israel was.”—Speaker’s Comm. Knobel interprets it as signifying the pillar of cloud and fire. “In it was present ‘the angel of God’ (Exo_14:19), i.e., the Divine presence, personally; in it appeared ‘the glory of Jehovah’ (Exo_16:10; Exo_40:34; Num_16:42). It was an elementary appearance, made use of by Him who appointed and rules the elements, to signify to His people His immediate presence and guardianship.”—Alford on Exo_13:21.
Kadesh, a city, i.e., Kadesh-barnea (Num_32:8). It is probable that Barnea was the older or original name of the town, and that it was called Kadesh because of the events which took place there, and are recorded in chaps. Num_13:26-33, or of those which are recorded in this chapter (Num_20:7-13), and that in those instances in which we find the name Kadesh in earlier portions of Scripture history it is applied proleptically, or by anticipation. “The nearest approximation which can be given to a site for the city of Kadesh, may be probably attained by drawing a circle from the pass Es-Sufa, at the radius of about a day’s journey; its south-western quadrant would intersect the wilderness of Paran, or Et-Tih, which is there overhung by the superimposed plateau of the mountain of the Amorites; while its south-eastern one will cross what has been designated as the wilderness of Zin. This seems to satisfy all the conditions of the passages of Genesis, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which refer to it. The nearest site in harmony with this view which has yet been suggested (Robinson, 2:175), is undoubtedly the Ain el-Weibeh.”—Biblical Dict.
Num_20:17. Let us pass through thy country. The entrance to Canaan from the South was very difficult by reason of the intervening mountains. which were lofty and steep. Moses, therefore, proposed to enter it from the east, across the Jordan. “In order to gain the banks of the Jordan by the shortest route they had to march nearly due east from Kadesh, and pass through the heart of the Edomitish mountains. These are lofty and precipitous, traversed by two or three narrow defiles, of which one (the Wady Ghuweir) only is practicable for an army. Hence the necessity of the request, Num_5:17.”—Speaker’s Comm. Ain el-Weibeh “is nearly opposite the Wady Ghuweir, the great opening into the steep eastern wall of the Arabah, and, therefore, the most probable ‘highway’ by which to ‘pass through the border’ of Edom.”—Biblical Dict.
The King’s high way. Heb. “the King’s way,” i.e., “the public high road. which was probably made at the cost of the state, and kept up for the king and his armies to travel upon, and is synonymous with the ‘sultan’s road’ (Derb es Sultan) or ‘emperor’s road,’ as the open, broad, old military roads are still called in the East.”—Keil and Del.
Num_20:19. I will only, without, &c. Heb. “lit. ‘it is nothing at all; I will go through with my feet:’ i.e., we want no great thing; we will only make use of the high road.”—Ibid.
Num_20:20. And Edom came out against him. “The Israelites without awaiting at Kadesh the return of their ambassadors, commenced their eastward march. At the tidings of their approach the Edomites mustered their forces to oppose them; and on crossing the Arabah they found their ascent through the mountains barred. The notice of this is inserted here to complete the narrative; but in order of time it comes after the march of Num_5:22.”—Speaker’s Comm.
Num_20:22. Mount Hor. Heb. lit. “Hor the mountain.” הֹר Hor, “is an old form for הַר,” Har.—Fuerst. So that the meaning of the name is simply “the mountain of mountains.” “It is one of the very few spots connected with the wanderings of the Israelites which admits of no reasonable doubt. The proofs of the identity of Jebel Harûn, as it is now called, with Mount Hor, are—
(1) The situation ‘by the coast of the land of Edom,’ where it is emphatically ‘the mountain’ (Hor) Num_20:23.
(2) The statement of Josephus (Ant. IV. iv. 7), that Aaron’s death occurred on a high mountain enclosing Petra.
(3) The modern name and traditional sanctity of the mountain as connected with Aaron’s tomb. The mountain is marked far and near by its double top, which rises like a huge castellated building from a lower base, and on one of these is the Mahometan chapel erected out of the remains of some earlier and more sumptuous building over the supposed grave.”—Stanley. Sinai and Pal.
“It is almost unnecessary to state that it is situated on the eastern side of the great valley of the Arabah, the highest and most conspicuous of the whole range of the sandstone mountains of Edom, having close beneath it on its eastern side—though strange to say the two are not visible to each other—the mysterious city of Petra.… Its height, according to the latest measurement, is 4800 feet (Eng.) above the Mediterranean, that is to say, about 1700 feet above the town of Petra, 4000 above the level of the Arabah, and more than 6000 above the Dead Sea.”—Biblical Dict.
Num_20:26. Strip Aaron of his garments (comp. Lev_8:7-9).
THE DEATH OF MIRIAM
(Num_20:1)
Two preliminary points are suggested by the assembling of “the whole congregation in the desert of Zin”:
First: The loss that sin inflicts upon a people. After nearly thirty-eight years the entire nation is congregated in the place where the sentence of penal wandering had been passed upon them. For all these years the sin of the rebellious people arrested their national history. Sin, whether in the individual or the nation, checks progress, and inflicts loss and injury.
Second: The control of God over human history. When the time fixed in the Divine purposes for the re-assembling of the people arrives, they again gather themselves together. The hand of the Lord is on the affairs of men, directing, restraining, overruling them for good. “His counsel shall stand, and He will do all His pleasure.”
The death of Miriam suggests the following observations—
I. Death terminates the most protracted life.
Assuming that Miriam was 10 or 12 years old when Moses was born (and her conduct as watcher over her infant brother [Exo_3:4-8] indicates that she was of fully that age), she must have been at the time of her death 130 years old. Hers was a long life; but death closed it. He whose life-pilgrimage is longest, reaches the end of his journey at last “Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told: do not all go to one place?” (a)
II. Death terminates the most eventful life.
Very eventful had been the life of Miriam.
1. The girl watching over the life of her infant brother (Exo_3:4-8). When we reflect upon the destiny marked out for her brother by God, how important was her duty at that time!
2. The experienced woman sharing in the interest and action of the stirring events which led to the great emancipation from Egypt. It appears to us a moral certainty that those events awakened her deep interest and aroused her to earnest effort.
3. The prophetess leading the exultant songs and dances of a triumphant people (Exo_15:20-21).
4. The envious woman aspiring after equality with, and speaking against her greater brother (Num_12:1-2). She was of a noble nature, yet she was capable of meanness, detraction, &c. Here is the blot upon her otherwise fair reputation.
5. The guilty woman smitten with leprosy because of the sin (Num_12:9-10). Her distinguished position and gifts could not avert from her the just punishment of her sin.
6. The leprous woman healed in answer to the prayer of the brother whom she had spoken against (Num_12:13-15). The most stirring and eventful life is closed by death, as well as the quiet and monotonous one.
III. Death terminates the most distinguished life.
1. Miriam was distinguished by her gifts. Prophetic gifts are ascribed to her. “Miriam, the prophetess,” is her acknowledged title (Exo_15:20). “The prophetic power showed itself in her under the same form as that which it assumed in the days of Samuel and David—poetry, accompanied with music and processions” (comp. Exo_15:20-21; Judges 5; 1Sa_10:5). Death spares not even the most richly gifted of our race. (b)
2. Miriam was distinguished by her position. A very high position is given to her in the Sacred Scriptures. In Mic_6:4, she is spoken of as one of the three deliverers of the enslaved people: “I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” “How grand was her position is implied in the cry of anguish which goes up from both her brothers” when she was smitten with leprosy. “Alas, my lord!… Let her not be as one dead,” &c. (Num_13:11-13). “And it is not less evident in the silent grief of the nation. ‘The people journeyed not till Miriam was brought in again.’ ” It is manifest also in the national mourning on account of her death; for, according to Josephus (Ant. IV. iv. 6), “they mourned for her thirty days.” Death brings down persons of the most exalted rank, and lays them low as those of the meanest station (comp. Job_3:13-19). (c)
IV. Death, by reason of sin, sometimes terminates life earlier than it otherwise would have done.
Miriam was not of the faithful few who entered the Promised Land. She sinned in murmuring and speaking against Moses; and, therefore, she must die and find a lonely grave in the desert of Zin. How many lives are cut short in our day by violation of sanitary laws, by gluttony, and by drunkenness!
V. Death sometimes terminates life with suggestions of a life beyond.
It was so in the case of Miriam. Can we think that the gifts with which she was so richly endowed, and the treasures of experience which in her long and eventful life she had gathered, were all lost at death? This would be in utter opposition to the analogy of the Divine arrangements in the universe. In nature we can trace no sign of waste; the most scrupulous economy may be observed in all the provinces of the material realm. Can we imagine that, under the rule of the same Divine Being, there exists in the spiritual realm such waste as would be involved in the extinction of those who are gifted in mind, ripe in experience, and holy in character? The Israelites did not leave Miriam in the desert of Zin: her body only remained there; her spirit, herself, passed swiftly to the great and glorious fellowship of the good “beyond the vail.” (d)
“The dead are like the stars by day,
Withdrawn from mortal eye;
But not extinct, they hold their way
In glory through the sky.
Spirits from bondage thus set free
Vanish amidst immensity,
Where human thought, like human sight,
Fails to pursue their trackless flight.”
Conclusion.
Since death is inevitable, it is the duty and interest of every one so to live that it shall be the door of admission into endless and blessed life. (e)
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) All forms recipient of life die sometime. Some few may be privileged to survive the rest, even for thousands of years, as happens with certain trees, but the same death which in regard to the children of men, while it surprises many, skips not one, at last overpowers the most tenacious. “Come like shadows, so depart,” is the law of the entire material creation,—in fact, as great a law as that it lives.… Birth, growth, and arriving at maturity, as completely imply decay and death as the source of a river implies the termination of it, or as spring and summer imply cornfields and reaping. Hence, whatever the vigour and the powers of repair that may pertain to any given structure, whatever resistance it may offer to the shocks of Ages, Time, sooner or later, dissolves it;—careful, however, to renew whatever it takes away, and to convert, invariably, every end into a new beginning. There is not a grave in the whole circuit of nature that is not at the same moment a cradle.—L. H. Grindon.
(b) Take up the learned man’s skull, and what is the difference between that and the skull of the merest pauper that scarcely knew his letters? Brown, impalpable powder, they both crumble down into the same elements. To die in a respectable position, what is the use of it? What are a few more plumes on the hearse, or a longer line of mourning coaches? Will these ease the miseries of Tophet? Ah! friends, you have to die. Why not make ready for the inevitable? Oh! if men were wise, they would see that all earth’s joys are just like the bubbles which our children blow with soap; they glitter and they shine, and then they are gone, and there is not even a wreck left behind.—C. H. Spurgeon.
(c) Death comes equally to us all, and makes us alt equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in a chimney are no epitaph of that, to tell me how high, or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons’ graves is speechless too; it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a prince whom thou couldest not look upon, will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow It thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard into the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, ‘This is the patrician, this is the noble flour, and this the yeoman, this the plebeian bran?”—Dr. J. Donne.
(d) We notice frequently over cemetery gates, as an emblematic device, a torch turned over, ready to be quenched. Ah! my brethren, it is not so, the torch of our life burns the better, and blazes the brighter for the change of death. The breaking of the pitcher which now surrounds the lamp and conceals the glory will permit our inner life to reveal its lofty nature, and ere long even the pitcher shall be so remodelled as to become an aid to that light; its present breaking is but preparatory to its future refashioning. It is a blessed thought that the part of us which must most sadly feel the mortal stroke is secured beyond all fear from permanent destruction. We know that this very body, though it moulders into dust, shall live again; these weeping eyes shall have all tears wiped from them; these hands which grasp to-day the sword of conflict shall wave the palm-branch of triumph.—C. H. Spurgeon.
“Because I live, ye shall live also.” That is the end of trouble. Now sorrow is crowned with hope! Now the gate is thrown open! Now the angel sits upon the stone! Now the emergent Christ walks forth, light and glorious as the sun in the heavens! Now the lost is found! Now all the stars hang like gems, and jewels, and treasures for us! Now, since Christ says that out of all these experiences He shall bring forth life, even as his own life was brought forth out of the tomb, what is there that we need trouble ourselves about?—H. W. Beecher.
(e) We shall all die! Do not let us post pone the intimation of our need of the Son of God until we are so faint that we can only receive him at the side of our death-bed. Do let us be more decent, more courteous, more civil. We shall all die! That is a fact that men have never been able to reason out of human history. If they could come to me and say, “We will guarantee you shall never die, you shall always be as you are—young, and strong, and active, and prosperous,” then I might incline an ear to their reasonings more deferentially than I am disposed to do at present. But when they are talking to me against religion and against the deeper life, against faith and spiritual love and service of the unseen, what do I behold? Oh, this: Over their shoulder a grim, ghastly spectre alled Death!—Joseph Parker, D.D.
Be ready, minister, see to it that thy church be in good order, for the grave shall soon be digged for thee; be ready, parent, see that your children are brought up in the fear of God, for they must soon be orphans; be ready, men of business, you that are busy in the world, see that your affairs are correct, see that you serve God with all your heart, for the days of your terrestrial service will soon be ended, and you will be called to give account for the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or whether they be evil. O may we all prepare for the tribunal of the great King with a care which shall be rewarded with the commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”—C. H. Spurgeon.
THE PRIVATIONS OF MAN AND THE RESOURCES OF GOD
(Num_20:2-11)
I. There are privations in the pilgrimage of human life.
“And there was no water for the congregation.” Man is a dependent creature. Every human being has to endure privation in some form or another. Even the wealthiest of men find that there are some desirable things which wealth cannot purchase. But in the case before us the Israelites were suffering from want, not of the luxuries or comforts of life, but of one of its great necessities: there was a great lack of water. In our pilgrimage we are often without things which we have regarded as essential to our life. One man thinks that without health his life would be worthless; yet he has to submit to its loss for a time. To another man prosperity seems essential; to another, friendship, or some one friend or relative; yet of these they are sometimes deprived. Life, in our view, has many privations. This characteristic of our pilgrimage is for wise and gracious ends. Privation should remind us that we are pilgrims—incite us to confide in God—and discipline our spirits into patience and power.
II. The privations in the pilgrimage of life sometimes develop the evil tendencies of human nature.
“And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with Moses,” &c. (Num_20:2-5). Here privation is made the occasion of an outrageous rebellion. The conduct of the people was—
1. Unreasonable. Why should they blame Moses and Aaron? Why chide Moses? He was not responsible for the lack of water. And as their leader, he was acting under Divine direction. It was neither reasonable nor fair to assail Moses and Aaron as they did.
2. Cruel. Moses and Aaron are of sorrowful heart because of the death of their distinguished sister; they need sympathy and consolation from the people; but instead thereof, they are unjustly and bitterly assailed. The feelings of our common humanity should have effectually restrained the people from treating their bereaved and sorrowing leaders after this fashion.
3. Ungrateful. The many and great mercies which God had bestowed upon them seem to be all and utterly lost sight of in their present trial. Not one word of thankfulness, but many words of complaint do they give utterance to. (a)
4. Degraded. “Wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs,” &c. How unspeakably mournful is the degradation of manhood when human beings estimate “figs” more highly than freedom! They prefer slavery with figs and vines and pomegranates than liberty without them. Such a preference indicates their lack of true manhood, and the serfdom of their spirits. (b)
5. Audaciously wicked. How awful is the impiety to which they gave expression in their insolent interrogations! To wish that they had died by the stroke of God’s judgment (Num_20:3); to falsely impute the wickedest design to their true-hearted and God-appointed leader (Num_20:4); to resent the emancipation which the Lord so graciously and gloriously wrought for them (Num_20:5)—how atrociously wicked is all this!
The trials of life never leave us as they find us. Unless they, by the grace of God, are the occasion of blessing to us, they will lead, as in the case of these rebellious Israelites, to deterioration of character by the development of its evil attributes. They will lead either to increased patience and acquiescence in the will of God, or to increased fretfulness and rebellion against His will, &c. (c)
III. The privations in the pilgrimage of life, and the evils which are sometimes occasioned by them, impel the good to seek help of God.
“And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces.” In their trial they betook themselves to God in prayer. Their action in this is very suggestive. It implies—
1. Consciousness of need. They felt their inability to deal with the disaffected and rebellious people; they sought the direction of Heaven, &c.
2. Faith in the sufficiency of the Divine help. The promptitude with which they resorted to the tabernacle, and cast themselves down in prayer to God, indicates their confidence in Him as their Helper. They believed in His wisdom for their guidance, &c.
3. Faith in the efficacy of prayer to obtain the Divine help. Moses and Aaron had proved convincingly the power of prayer on several occasions. “Ask, and it shall be given you,” &c.
4. Faith in the efficacy of unspoken prayer. There is no record of any words addressed by them to God. The probability is, that their feelings and desires were too deep and strong to be expressed in words. There may be true and effective prayer without speech. The holiest and profoundest longings of our souls cannot be expressed. In this respect they resemble the prayers of the Divine Spirit who “maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Here, then, at the throne of Divine grace, is the refuge of the godly soul in time of trial. This refuge is
(1) ever-accessible;
(2) all-sufficient, &c.
IV. The privations in the pilgrimage of life are sometimes removed in answer to the prayer of the good.
“And the glory of the Lord appeared unto them, and the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take the rod,” &c. (Num_20:6-11). Thus in answer to the prayer of Moses and Aaron, the privation of the people was removed by this copious supply of water. Concerning this supply of water, notice—
1. It was Divine. In a special sense it was the gift of God. Before it was given His “glory appeared;” He directed His servant what to do to obtain it; He bestowed it.
2. It was miraculous. Speaking to a cliff, or smiting it with a rod, were not natural means for obtaining water. But this water was supernaturally given. The miracle was manifest and indisputable. It was wrought in the presence of the assembled people. Spiritual blessings transcend nature. Redemption is supernatural in its origin, supernatural in its great Agent, &c.
3. It was unmerited. This murmuring, rebellious congregation did not deserve any benefit at the hand of God. He blessed them because He is “rich in mercy.” Mankind did not merit redemption. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” How great are our demerits! yet God blesses us with the treasures of His grace, &c.
4. It was abundant. “The water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts.” How abundant are spiritual blessings! God “abundantly pardons”; He “makes all grace abound,” &c. (1Co_9:8; 1Co_9:11). (d)
5. It was free. The water, without any charge or any restriction, was available to all. An emblem of the blessings of salvation. “Ho, every one that thirsteth,” &c. (Isa_55:1). “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” (e)
6. It was bestowed in answer to prayer. Moses and Aaron sought His help in their extremity, and He stilled the rebellious people by removing the privation from which they suffered. And in all the privations of the pilgrimage of our life, if we seek Him in prayer He will either remove the privation, or give us grace to endure it patiently; He will either lighten our burden or increase our strength. His resources are adequate to all the necessities of our pilgrimage. He is ever ready to communicate freely of these resources to all who seek Him.
“Am I thirsting? He will guide me
Where refreshing waters flow;
Faint or feeble, He’ll provide me
Grace for every want I know.”
—Monsell.
Conclusion.
1. Guard against the sin of which Israel was guilty. In time of trial, do not murmur; be patient, &c.
2. Believe in and make use of the efficacy of prayer. “Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee,” &c.
3. Exercise constant trust in God. “He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.”
“Then, my soul, since God doth love thee,
Faint not, droop not, do not fear;
Though His heaven is high above thee,
He Himself is ever near.”
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) But we must cease to wonder at them, and learn to confess our own corruption of heart, and proneness to yield and fall down in time of temptation, unless we be stayed up by the mighty hand of God. For albeit He be most gracious and merciful unto us, hedgeth us round about with many blessings, and compasseth us with riches of grace on every side, yet we forget them all if any one cross do any way lie upon us. If the Lord touch us with sickness, as with His little finger; with losses, with crosses, with poverty, or any misery, such is our impatience, that we always dwell upon the meditation of that want, we look upon it with our eyes, we handle it with our hands, we toss it in our minds, and never remember the multitude of His mercies, the peace of a good conscience, the loving countenance of the Lord, the seal of our adoption, the assurance of our salvation, the sweet taste of His love shed in our hearts by the Holy Ghost; so that one trouble doth more daunt us and strike us to the heart than many blessings can comfort and refresh us. But God, taking away outward blessings, giveth spiritual to His children, and doth sweeten the bitterness of the cross with inward consolation, and doth recompense it with heavenly grace, whereby we gain more in the spirit than we lose in the flesh.—W. Attersoll.
I remember in our Baptist martyrology the story of one of the Baptists of Holland escaping from his persecutors. A river was frozen over, and the good man crossed it safely, but his enemy was of greater bulk, and the ice gave way under him. The Baptist, like a child of God as he was, turned round and rescued his persecutor just as he was sinking beneath the ice to a certain death. And what did the wretch do? As soon as ever he was safely on the shore he seized the man who had saved his life, and dragged him off to the prison from which he was only taken to be put to death! We wonder at such inhumanity; we are indignant at such base returns—but the returns which the ungodly make to God are baser far. I wonder myself as I talk to you—I wonder that I speak so calmly on so terribly humbling a theme; and, remembering our past lives, and our long ingratitude to God, I marvel that we do not turn this place into one vast Bochim, or place of weeping, and mingle our tears in a flood, with expressions of deep shame and self-abhorrence for our dealings towards God.—C. H. Spurgeon.
(b) There are others who seek how much they can call their own, by whatever means; of how much benefit they can hold a monopoly; from how large a place in God’s universe they can keep other men off, and how much envy they can rouse in rivals and neighbours. These have never mastered their baser and greedier instincts, and so far have never known the Divine joy of being blessed for their benefactions, and have never tasted of the peace that passeth understanding. Very often God punishes as by letting us have what we seek.…
To the seekers of mere material and selfish comfort, one serious consideration is presented by the progress of history. That kind of search is sinking. Every new day that breaks into the sky degrades it; both because new lights are stationed about it, in our educational and industrial wakefulness, to show its shame, and because the practical tendencies of the time force upon materialism a more and more hard and sottish character. In more imaginative periods, romance threw about idolatry at least the graces of fancy, and made it poetical. Now it is either shrewd or stolid. It is the idolatry of the arithmetic, the stock list, and the palate; not of fable and heroism. The noblest element has vanished. It is bare gluttony. If you are going to worship the animal, then return to the inventions of Egyptian and Grecian genius—“the fair humanities of old religion.” Give us back at least the simplicity of fetishism with its sensuality. Rebuild the Pantheon. Relight the fires on Pagan altars. Repeople the woods with dryads, and the water with nymphs. Anything rather than the gross surfeit of appetite, and the clinking creed of dollars! And if you cannot do that, take it as a sober hint that God’s providence does not mean to have materialists in the world at all. Seek something worthier of your humanity.—F. D. Huntington, D.D.
(c) Many men are distressing themselves, when they think of their trials, by imagining that they have done something wrong, or God never could have sent such afflictions to them personally, or to their household. That is a mistake. There are trials that are simply tests—not punishments; trials of faith and patience—not rods sent to scourge men because they have been doing some particular evil thing. God’s people are tried. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” The honour is not in the trial; it is in the spirit in which the trial is borne. Take the trial impatiently, with murmuring against God, and we shall be the worse for our trial, the poorer for our suffering. Take the trial as a veiled angel sent by our Father to say things to us which no other messenger could so suitably convey, then even the rod shall be precious to us, and the herald’s utterances of God shall have music in them that shall comfort, and revive, and cheer the heart.—Joseph Parker, D.D.
(d) Stand still awhile, and contemplate the abundant mercy of our blessed God! A river deep and broad is before you. Track it to its fountain head, see it welling up in the covenant of grace, in the eternal purposes of infinite wisdom. The secret source is no small spring, no mere bubbling fount; it is a very Geyser, leaping aloft in fulness of power; the springs of the sea are not comparable therewith. Not even an angel could fathom the springs of eternal love, or measure the depths of infinite grace. Follow now the stream; mark it in all its course. See how it widens and deepens, how at the cross foot it expands into a measureless river! Mark how the filthy come and wash, See how each polluted one comes up milk-white from the washing! Note how the dead are brought to be bathed in this sacred stream, and mark how they live the moment they touch its wave. Mark how the sick are laid upon the bank, and if but the spray of the river falls upon them, they are made whole! See how on either bank rich verdure clothes the land! Wheresoever this stream cometh all is life and happiness. Observe along the margin the many trees whose leaves never wither, and whose fruits in season are always brought to maturity; these all draw their life from this flood, and drink from this river of God, which is full of water. Fail not with gladsome eye to note the thousand barques of fairest sail, which scud along the mighty river with colours flying, each vessel laden with joy. Behold how happily they are borne along by the current of mercy to the ocean of infinite felicity! Now we reach the mighty main of mercy, dare you attempt with wings of faith to fly over that glassy sea? No shore gives boundary to that great deep, no voice proclaims its length and breadth, but from its lowest deeps, and all along its unruffled bosom, I hear a voice which saith, “Herein is love.”—C. H. Spurgeon.
(e) Freely, that may be lavishly, ungrudgingly, with fulness and overflow, yet without upbraiding. Or, freely may mean without price or tax, without money as the air is given, without price as the sunlight is poured forth. So “freely given to us of God.” Why this is most God-like wholly. No good thing doth he withhold from them that walk uprightly. “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for as all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things,”—ALL things,—ALL things! “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” God “giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.”—Joseph Parker, D.D.
THE SIN OF MOSES
(Num_20:10)
Introduction—
The facts recorded.
I. What there was sinful in Moses.
1. There was disobedience to the Divine command.
2. There was immoderate heat and passion.
3. There was unbelief.
4. It was all publicly done, and so the more dishonouring to God.
II. What we may learn from this tragical story.
1 What a holy and jealous God He is with whom we have to do.
2. The Lord’s children need not think it strange if they get abundance to exercise that grace in which they most excel.
3. Let us not be surprised to see or hear the saints failing even in the exercise of that grace wherein they most excel.
4. Never think yourselves secure from falling till ye be at the end of your race.
5. What need we have to guard constantly our unruly passions, and put a bridle on our lips.
6. Though God pardons the iniquity of His servant, yet He will take vengeance on their inventions (Psa_99:8).
7. If God punishes His children thus for falling into the snare, how shall they escape who lay the snare for them?
8. Observe the ingenuousness of the penmen of the Holy Scripture—Moses records his own fault.—T. Boston.
THE ROCK AT KADESH, AN EMBLEM OF CHRIST
(Num_20:11, and 1Co_10:4, last clause.)
Jehovah is frequently spoken of by the Sacred Writers as a Rock (Deu_32:4; Deu_32:15; Deu_32:31; 1Sa_2:2; 2Sa_22:2; Psa_18:2; Psa_38:1; Psa_31:2; Psa_42:9; et al.). And St. Paul, referring to the rock at Horeb, and probably to this one at Kadesh also, says, “That Rock was Christ”—i.e., a type of Christ. This rock is an emblem of Christ—
I. In its characteristics.
1. Permanence. How firm and stable are the rocks! Generations of men come and go; but the grand old cliffs remain. Of all earthly things they are the most abiding. “The Son abideth for ever.” “Christ abideth for ever.” “He ever liveth to make intercession.” “I am alive for evermore.” Jesus Christ is the “sure foundation” (Isa_28:16; 1Co_3:11; 1 Corinthians 1. Pet. Num_2:6-7). (a)
2. Unchangeableness. Geologists tell us of changes even in the rocks; but apparently and to the ordinary observer they are immutable. They are the best symbols on the earth of the unchangeable. How unchangeable is our Lord and Saviour! “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”
II. In the water which flowed from it.
Christianity and its blessings are frequently compared to pure water in the Bible (comp. Isa_55:1; Joh_4:14; Joh_7:37-38; Rev_21:6; Rev_22:17). There are several points of analogy between this water and Gospel blessings. Both are—
1. Necessary. Water is essential to life. Spiritual life is impossible apart from Christ (1Jn_5:12). (b)
2. Pure. This water was from a cliff, not from a pond: it had been filtered in the hills, and streamed forth pure and bright to the thirsty multitude. The blessings of Christianity are both pure and purifying.
3. Refreshing. Mark how water refreshes the parched earth; how it revives the fading, drooping plant or flower; how it re-animates the pilgrim exhausted by thirst. “A Man shall be as rivers of water in a dry place.” (Comp. Isa_35:6-7; Isa_41:18; Isa_44:3). (c)
4. Abundant. (On this and the following points see on Num_20:2-11). (d)
5. Free. (e)
6. Supernatural.
7. Divine.
Application.
“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,” &c.
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) Here is simple existence, with no note of beginning or end. Our Lord says not, “Before Abraham was, I was,” but “I am.” He claims pre-existence indeed, but He does not merely claim pre-existence; He unveils a consciousness of Eternal Being. He speaks as one on Whom time has no effect, and for Whom it has no meaning. He is the I AM of ancient Israel; He knows no past, as He knows no future; He is unbeginning, unending Being; He is the eternal “Now.”—Canon Liddon.
(b) Yonder shipwrecked man has constructed a raft, and far out on the wild expanse of pitiless waters he has floated wearily day after day, sighing for a friendly sail or for sight of land; what would he not give for a little water, for water has become the essential of his life; his tongue is like a firebrand, and his mouth is as an oven, and he himself all dried and parched, sighs and cries to heaven, hoping that perhaps a merciful shower may drop refreshment upon Him. Now, Jesus Christ is the water of life, and the bread of life, to such as live unto God. It is absolutely necessary for the continuance of their spiritual life that they should live upon Him; and as they do live upon Him, their thirst is quenched, their hunger is removed, and their spirit rejoices with a “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Life and the food that sustaineth life are among the most precious things man can possess, and these are for your souls stored up in Jesus.—C. H. Spurgeon.
(c) Water typifies the Gospel by its refreshment. How different you feel after you get a glass of cool water, or after you have plunged into the bath! On a hot summer day there is nothing that so soon brings you back from a bad temper or a disturbed spirit, and puts you into a happy frame of mind and body; as cold water. Blessed be God for water! I love to hear it fall in the shower and dash in the cascade, and to see it rush from the ice-pitcher into the clear glass. Thank God for water! Clear water! bright water! beautiful water! But I have to tell you there is a better refreshment even than that. There was a time when you were hounded of convictions. Sinai thundered. The wrath of God cried, “Fly!” Justice cried, “Fly!” Your own fears cried, “Fly!” Mercy said, “Come! Come!” and you plunged like a hart into the waterbrooks, and out of that flood your soul came up cool, and clean, and radiant; and you looked around and said, “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will tell you what He hath done for my soul.” There came a time of perplexity in your heart. You lost your property. The gold eagles took wings and flew away. Death, like a black hawk, swooped upon the family brood, and the children were gone. You measured your life from groan to groan, from loss to loss, from tear to tear. You said from your distressed spirit, “Oh! that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at rest.” From the depths of your fevered soul you called out, “Has God forgotten to be gracious? Is His mercy clean gone for ever? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies?” As when you have been walking in a thick wood on a hot summer day you heard the dash of fountains, and your spirit was cheered; so, while you were listening for the answer, the promise of God dropped cool and fresh and sparkling from the Throne: “There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.” You rejoiced at the thought of the fountain. Your fevered soul thrilled with the cool touch, and you cried, “Eureka! Eureka! I have found it. Water! cold water! bright water! everlasting water! bursting from the Throne!”—T. De Witt Talmage, D.D.
(d) Water typifies the Gospel because of its abundance. When we pour the water from the pitcher into the glass we have to be careful or the glass will overflow, and we stop when the water has come to the rim. But when God, in summer, pours out His showers, He keeps pouring on, and pouring on, until the grass-blades cry, “Enough!” and the flowers, “Enough!” and the trees, “Enough!” but God keeps pouring on and pouring on until the fields are soaked, and the rivers overflow, and the cisterns are all filled, and the great reservoirs are supplied, and there is water to turn the wheel, water to slake the thirst of the city, water to cleanse the air, water to wash the hemisphere. Abundance! And so with this glorious Gospel. Enough for one; enough for all. Thousands have come to this fountain, and have drank to the satisfaction of their souls. Other thousands will come; and yet the fountain will not be exhausted.
Just after the battle of Antietam, with some of the other members of the Christian Commission, I went down to help look after the wounded; and on the afternoon of a very hot day I came to a pump of water. I saw a soldier, with musket, guarding the pump. I put out my cup, and he filled it about a quarter full with water. I said, “Why do you not fill my cup?” He replied, “Water is scarce! Here is a great army, and we do not know where to get water after this is gone; and I have orders to give no more than that.” What a poor supply for a thirsty man on a hot day! But, glory be to God! that in this Gospel fountain there is water enough for all the armies of the earth, and for all the armies of heaven. You cannot drink it dry. I stand this evening offering this Gospel to all who are here, with just as much confidence that there is enough for them as though there were only two or three persons present.—Ibid.
(e) Water typifies the Gospel by its freeness. On this hot Sabbath, after the cows break through the alders into the meadow to drink, how much do they pay for that which they drink? The humming-bird drinks from the wine glass of the honeysuckle. How much is it a glass? There is a tax on the city water, but no tax upon the great rivers that roll in perpetual volume to the sea. How much will the world pay for all the showers that this summer refreshed the cornfields? Nothing. It is free, and so is this glorious gospel. It is free in its pardon, hope, and salvation, to all who will accept it. Here is a man who says, “I will pay for it, or I will not have it. I am an independent man; and I will give so much to have my soul redeemed. I will endow a college; or I will establish a school; or I will build a church, and in that way purchase my salvation!” Or he says, “I will do some grand, good works; and God, I know, will accept them.” God says. “Away with your good works as a purchase for salvation! Take this Gospel for nothing, or never take it. If is free.” “Without money and without price” is this Gospel fountain.—Ibid.
THE SINS OF HOLY MEN AND THEIR PUNISHMENT
(Num_20:12-13)
The sin of Moses and Aaron seems to have included—
First: Want of faith. “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed Me not.” “It seems to have been,” says Dean Stanley, “a feeling of distrust. ‘Can we bring water out of the cliff?’ (Num_20:10; LXX μὴ ἐξάξομεν, ‘surely we cannot’)” The smiting of the cliff twice does not indicate the calmness of faith, but the presence of doubt rather, “as if the promise of God ‘would not have been fulfilled without all the smiting on his part.’ ” There was not, we believe, positive unbelief or distrust of the Divine word; but, on the other hand, there was not the full assurance of faith which they should have manifested.
Second: Irritation of spirit. The impatience of Moses is manifest in his speech,—“Hear now, ye rebels;” and in his action,—“He smote the rock twice.” Worn out by the repeated and aggravating perversities of the people, the man of God breaks down, and for a moment his long patience is overborne by petulance. (Comp. Psa_106:32-33). (a)
Third: Departure from Divine directions.
(1) They fell short of the Divine orders in not speaking to the cliff. “Speak ye unto the cliff before their eyes,” said the Lord; but they did not do so.
(2) They went beyond the Divine directions in speaking to the people, and smiting the rock. The directions of God never exceed His requirements. If His commands are particular and in detail, He requires that our obedience also shall be particular and in detail.
Fourth: Assumption of power. The question, “Must we fetch you water out of this rock?” does not give honour to God. It is such as they might have asked if by their own unaided efforts they were about to obtain water for the people.
Fifth: The publicity of the whole. “Ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel.” It was an aggravation of their offence that it was committed in the presence of the assembled congregation. They occupied an eminent position; they were the representatives of Jehovah to the people, the eyes of the people were fixed upon them; they should therefore have been more careful to honour God before the people. On a former occasion Moses had been guilty of unbelief towards God (Num_11:22-23), and God rebuked him for his sin. That however was in private; while this was in public, and accordingly meets with severer punishment from the Lord.
The text leads us to consider—
I. The liability of the good to sin.
Moses was one of the holiest and noblest men that ever lived, yet here he sins against God. “In him there was a rare combination of intellectual and moral excellences. In no man did the force of principle reach a higher ascendancy, and in no man can we discover a truer majesty of character. It stands out in bold and impressive relief. His was a noble heart; one purer or truer never beat within a human bosom. Noble by nature, he was nobler still by the height and force of his virtue.” But he was not infallible: while he remained in this world he was exposed to temptation, and liable to fall into sin. And under the strain of the provocation of these perverse and rebellious people, he did, alas! fall into sin. Let the great and good be warned. You are safe only as you exercise constant watchfulness, humility, and trust in God. (b)
II. The danger of good men failing in those excellences which most distinguish them.
Moses was pre-eminent for meekness (Num_12:3); but here his meekness fails, and he is petulant and stern. Abraham was celebrated for his faith in God (Rom_4:11; Gal_3:9); yet upon two occasions his faith failed for a time (Gen_12:12; Gen_20:2; Gen_20:11-13). Elijah was one of the most fearless and heroic of men; yet he fled from the threatened vengeance of Jezebel in a very panic of alarm, and remained for some time in a state of deep dejection (1Ki_19:1-4; 1Ki_19:10; 1Ki_19:14). Peter was unquestionably courageous; yet the charges of a maid-servant reduced him for a time to an utter coward (Luk_22:55-60). Guard well the strong points of your character; for there the greatest danger often is. This seems paradoxical; nevertheless it is true. The points of our character which we know are weak we watch and fortify; in our strong points we feel so secure that we deem it unnecessary to exercise vigilance concerning them; and this sense of security leads us sometimes to fail in those strong points—in those virtues which are most fully ours. (c)
III. The impartiality of the administration of the Divine government.
Moses and Aaron were both greatly honoured of God—Moses especially so; yet God punishes them for sin, as well as others. “Because ye believed not Me, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I gave them.” Surely, this was no slight punishment. After all their brilliant and fondly-cherished hopes of possessing the “good land,” after all they had done and borne as leaders of the rebellious people, the honour of leading them into the land shall not be theirs; they shall not even enter therein. “Thou wast a God that forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.” If a saint of God violate His laws, he must bear the penalties which he has incurred. The dark crimes which stained the spirit and life of the man after God’s own heart never ceased to trouble him in after days. “Whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.” (d)
IV. The great guilt of those who by their wickedness occasion sin in the good.
If Moses and Aaron be “thus punished that sin by other men’s occasions, how much more shall they be punished that are the occasions, or give the occasions! Moses and Aaron had never thus offended had the people not murmured; and many a sin should be daily uncommitted did not some allure, tempt, and provoke, or by some means give occasion thereof.”—Babington.
“Woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.” He who not only sins himself, but by temptation or otherwise occasions sin in others, shall be “beaten with many stripes.”
V. The means which God uses to deter men from sin.
“This is the water of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with the Lord, and he was sanctified in them.” The name was changed from Kadesh-barnea to Meribah-kadesh as a memorial of the sin of the people, and of Moses and Aaron, that others might take warning and shun sin. Many are the means which God uses to keep man from sin; memorials of human sins and Divine judgments, expostulations with the sinner, warnings against sin, encouragements and aids to obedience, are all so employed. By the voice of history, by the Law from Sinai, by the Gospel of His Son, by the Cross of Jesus Christ, by the influences of His Spirit, God is ever crying to the sinner, “Oh! do not this abominable thing that I hate.”
Application.
Let Christians guard against temptation; let them cultivate a watchful and prayerful spirit. “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” “Be sober, be vigilant,” &c. (e)
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) If anger arises in thy breast, instantly seal up thy lips, and let it not go forth; for like fire when it wants vent, it will suppress itself. It is good in a fever to have a tender and smooth tongue; but is better that it be in anger; for if it be rough and distempered, there it is an ill sign, but here it is an ill cause. Angry passion is a fire, and angry words are like breath to fan them together; they are like steel and flint, sending out fire by mutual collision.—Jeremy Taylor.
(b) Humanity has its weaker side, and when assailed by temptation and the force of evil, is liable to yield, and thus to be overcome. No degree of moral excellence or of spiritual attainment places us beyond the possibility of declension. Imperfection and error attach to us so long as we are in the flesh, and through the weakness and the waywardness of our nature, our highest joys may be marred and limited. If our will could be brought into perfect harmony with the will of God—if we were at all times to move and act in strict conformity with the Revelation of His infinite mind—if there were no contrariety between our inclination and His revealed intimations, deep, and full, and inexpressible would be our joy. It is when our will comes into opposition to His will—it is when we deviate and depart from that which He has prescribed, that our conduct becomes a source of disquietude; and the consciousness that we have preferred our own line of action to the Divinely-prescribed method not only introduces a great disturbing element into our nature, but robs us of purer joy and profounder peace.—R. Ferguson, LL.D.
Human nature has never been perfect in all its qualities, energies, and services; the perfection of human nature can be wrought out only by long-continued and severe probation. In choosing instruments for the representation of His will and the execution of His purposes, God has always chosen men who were best fitted on the whole for such ministry, though in some particulars they have disastrously and pitifully failed.
Consider, knowing human nature as we do, bow beneficial a thing it was to the great men themselves to be shown now and again that they were imperfect, and that they were only great and strong as they were good, as they were true to God. To be an illustrious leader, to have power and authority amongst men, always to be in high places, and to be absolutely without a fault of disposition, temper, or desire, is enough to tempt any man to think that he is more than a man: and even to be without actual social fault, that can be pointed out and blamed, is not unlikely to give a man a false notion of the real state of his own nature. We may learn quite as much from our failures as from our successes. I have seen more truly what I am by my faults than by my graces, and never have I prayed with so glowing a fervour as when I have seen that there is but a step between me and death and that I have nearly taken it.—Joseph Parker, D.D.
(c) Abraham, the great man and prophet of the Lord, shows his littleness by giving way to a cowardly fear that strangely divided his heart with the noblest faith found in the ancient world. His fear in one direction was simply ridiculous and pitiful; when he came amongst a powerful people he was always afraid that they would kill him in order to get possession of his wife. On the face of it the thing would seem to be incredible: here is a man who left his kindred and his father’s house, who braved the hardships of the wilderness, who arose and pursued kings and slew them, and delivered the prey from the hand of the mighty, tottering like a weak old coward when he thinks that he may be killed. He made a mean figure before Pharaoh, and he makes a meaner still before Abimelech. In one sense I am glad that Abraham made such a fool of himself; for had he been without flaw or blemish, perfect and invincible in faith, and complete in the sanctification of his character, he would have awed me by his supernatural respectability, and I should never have thought of him as an example or a pattern.—Ibid.
(d) The punishment of sin is impartial. There is a form of self-deception common to us all, and especially in youth, by which we admit the general law, but try to shirk its personal, its individual, application. It is the old, old story of Eden over and over again in the case of every one of us—the serpent creeping up to us, all glitter and fascination—all dulcet whisper and sinuous lies, and saying to us, “See how fair the fruit is: how much to be desired! Be as God, knowing good and evil. Thou shalt not surely die.” And so the boy and the youth—aye, and in his folly the grown man too, believes that it shall not be so with him; that he will repent; that he is the darling of Providence; that he is the favourite of heaven—he the one who shall sin and shall not suffer. If others handle pitch they shall be defiled. If others take fire into their bosom they shall be burnt; but God will indulge him. And the very spirits of evil laugh at each one going as an ox to the slaughter, when they dupe him into the fancy that, out of special regard for him, that adamantine chain of moral gravitation more lasting and binding than that by which the stars are held in their spheres, will be snapped; that sin, for him only, will change its nature, and at his approach the Gehenna of punishment be transformed into a garden of delight. Is it so, my brethren? Has there ever been any human being yet, since time began, however noble, however beautiful, however gifted, however bright with genius or radiant with fascination, who has sinned with impunity? Ah, no! God is no respecter of persons. Fire burns and water drowns, whether the sufferer be a worthless villain or whether it be a fair and gentle child. And so the moral law works, whether the sinner be a David or a Judas, whether he be a publican or a priest.—F. W. Farrar, D.D.
(e) A child would generally stand on its feet in a gust of wind if he knew it was coming; but when the wind happens to come round a corner furiously, he may be taken off his feet. Mind you are well ballasted by prayer every morning before your vessel puts out to sea, or carrying the quantity of sail you do, you may be blown out upon the waves to your perpetual shipwreck. Watch constantly against those things which are thought to be no temptations. The most poisonous serpents are found where the sweetest flowers grow, and when Cleopatra would have an asp to poison herself, it was brought in a basket of fair flowers. Beware of arrows shot from a golden bow, or by a woman’s hand. “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.”—C. H. Spurgeon.
SIN IN THE CHILD OF GOD
(Num_20:12)
The test gives us the reason why Moses and Aaron were kept from going into the land of Canaan, and it suggests to us some lessons about Sin in the child of God. God’s people sin. Not a sinless character in the Bible, but Christ. No Perfectionism on earth taught there. Sin in the child of God is—
I. Very painful to God.
There is a tone of intense grief in the text. God hates sin in all; but most of all in His own children. Our own child falling into sin, and a mere acquaintance doing so—how differently we should feel in the one case from what we should in the other! Nothing hurts God more than sin in His own children.
II. Most inexcusable.
Speaking strictly, no sin can be excused. Sin is a crime, not a misfortune; so there can be no sufficient excuse for it. This is emphatically true of the child of God: he has a higher knowledge of duty; he has experienced the evil of sin, and felt its sting; he has a new principle—the Divine life within him struggling against sin; he has God to help him—a God who is ever accessible, &c. God speaks in the text as if Moses and Aaron had nothing whatever to palliate their conduct.
III. Most disastrous in its results.
God’s name is dishonoured—brought into disrepute. The text shows that God entrusts His character to the keeping of His people. We have to sanctify Him before men; and in the proportion in which we sin we fail to do so. We are the world’s Bible; they learn of God through us; they too often estimate Him from our life. No one can tell the injury which is done by inconsistent professors of religion! The weak stumble; the wicked are encouraged in their sins; the worldly have false impressions of God and His religion. It is an awful thing for a Christian to sin.
IV. Very certain of punishment.
“Be sure your sin will find you out:” this is true of the child of God. His sin will give him pain. None of us shall sin with impunity. Moses was the friend of God (Exo_33:11), yet God could not pass by his sin. God’s love to us does not blind Him to our faults. There is no weakness in Him towards His children, as there is often in us in our dealings with ours. He has ever visited His people for their sin; and sometimes, as in the text, though He may forgive, they have to suffer for the sin as long as they remain upon earth. The text tells us that sin is a hard and bitter thing in the child of God. Let this incident—
1. Make God’s people more watchful.
2. Lead others to ponder their ways; for if God visits His own children for sin, a fortiori, He will not let the wicked escape.
3. Let none forget that God can forgive sin—all sin—through Jesus Christ.—David Lloyd.
A REASONABLE REQUEST AND AN UNGENEROUS REFUSAL
(Num_20:14-21)
We have in this paragraph—
I. A reasonable request.
“We are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border: let us pass,” &c. This request was—
1. Reasonable in itself. They desired to enter Canaan from the east, crossing the Jordan; and their direct road to the east of the Jordan was through the land of Edom. If they are not permitted to travel by that way, they must take a very circuitous route (Num_21:4). They asked simply for permission to travel “by the king’s way,” and promised neither to depart from that way into the fields or vineyards, nor to make use of the wells of water without payment for the same. Their request was—
2. Urged by forcible reasons.
(1) By the relationship existing between them. “Thus saith thy brother Israel.” The Israelites and the Edomites were descendants of the twin brothers, Jacob and Esau. The Israelites desire a renewal of the ancient kindnesses of their ancestors (Gen_33:1-15). Brotherhood should promote kindness, increase mutual helpfulness, &c. (a)
(2) By the sufferings which the Israelites had endured. “Thou knowest all the travel that hath befallen us: how our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time; and the Egyptians vexed us and our fathers.” The sufferings they had borne at the hand of strangers should have induced their kinsfolk to succour and help them.
(3) By the mercies which God had shown to Israel. “And when we cried unto the Lord, He heard our voice, and sent an Angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt,” &c. The blessings which God had bestowed upon them should have been viewed—(i.) As an indication that it was His will that others should aid them. His will is binding, &c. (ii.) As an example to encourage others to aid them. (iii.) As an indication of His favour towards them, which suggested that it was to the interest of others to aid them. It is perilous to resist those whom God defends; it is prudent to further their designs, &c.
(4) Because Israel would guarantee Edom against any loss. “We will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of the wells,” &c. (Num_20:17). “We will go by the highway: and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it,” &c. (Num_20:19). To nomad chiefs, rich in flocks and herds, wells of water are a most precious and important property. Kalisch: “The possession of a well in arid regions not unfrequently causes strife and warfare between whole tribes, and the protection of his wells is a prominent object of solicitude to an Arab sheikh.” (b) But the Israelites promise to respect these rights of property; and to cause the Edomites no loss or damage. Thus the arguments by which they enforce their request are conspicuously fair and reasonable.
II. An ungenerous resfual.
“And Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword.… And he said, Thou shalt not go through,” &c. (Num_20:20-21). This refusal of the Edomites probably arose from—
1. Fear that if they complied with the request of the Israelites the result might be injurious to them. They did not believe the promises made by the Israelites; and they feared “what so great an army once got in might do; they are not usually so easily removed.” The fear was not unnatural, &c.
2. Envy at the growing power of Israel. The Edomites knew of their deliverance from Egypt; of their victory over the Amalekites (Exo_17:8-13); of their immense number; and of their pretensions in respect to Canaan (Exo_15:14-17); and they were envious of their increasing strength.
3. Remembrance of the ancient injury inflicted by Jacob upon Esau. “Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing, and now the hatred revived, when the blessing was ready to be inherited.” “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city; and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.” The nearer the relationship between the offender and the offended, the wider is the breach and the more difficult is the reconciliation. The memory of an injury such as that which Jacob inflicted upon Esau it is perhaps impossible to wipe out; it is handed down from generation to generation, &c. The recollection of that injury imparted resoluteness and severity to the refusal of Edom to grant the request of Israel.
Conclusion.
1. Learn that no alienation is so wide and bitter as that between brethren or other near relations. (c)
2. Where such alienation exists, let us seek to bring about reconciliation—a complete healing of the breach. (d)
3. Cultivate brotherly kindness.
4. Respect the rights of others even when the assertion of those rights is carried to an extreme. “Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border; wherefore Israel turned away from him.”
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) Two days after the terrible battle of Chickamanga. I was passing over the battle-field. In a thick clump of bushes, on the side of a ravine, I saw a young man seated beside a tree with his arm bandaged. Seeing that his arm was badly wounded, I asked why he had not gone to the hospital in the rear. He replied, pointing to a corpse that lay near by, “That is my brother; and I am determined never to leave him until he is buried.” I had the dead max buried, and the wounded brother taken care ch—Memphis Advocate, quoted in Dict. of Illust.
(b) The special necessity of a supply of water in a hot climate has always involved among the Eastern nations questions of property of the highest importance, and sometimes given rise to serious contention. To give a name to a well denoted a right of property, and to stop or destroy one once dug was a military expedient, a mark of conquest or an encroachment on territorial right claimed or existing in its neighbourhood. Thus the well Beersheba was opened, and its possession attested with special formality by Abraham (Gen_21:30-31). In the hope of expelling Isaac from their neighbourhood, the Philistines stopped up the wells which had been dug in Abraham’s time and called by his name, an encroachment which was stoutly resisted by the followers of Isaac (Gen_26:15-33; see also 2Ki_3:19; 2Ch_26:10). The Kuran notices abandoned wells as signs of desertion (Sur. xxii.). To acquire wells which they had not themselves dug, was one of the marks of favour foretold to the Hebrews on their entrance into Canaan (Deu_6:11). To possess one is noticed as a mark of independence (Pro_5:15), and to abstain from the use of wells belonging to others, a disclaimer of interference with their property (Num_20:17; Num_20:19; Num_21:22). Similar rights of possession, actual and hereditary, exist among the Arabs of the present day. Wells, Burckhardt says, in the interior of the desert, are exclusive property, either of a whole tribe, or of individuals whose ancestors dug the wells. If the well be the property of a tribe, the tents are pitched near it, whenever rain water becomes scarce in the desert; and no other Arabs are then permitted to water their camels. But if the well belongs to an individual, he receives presents from all strange tribes who pass or on camp at the well, and refresh their camels with the water of it. The property of such a well is never alienated; and the Arabs say that the possessor is sure to be fortunate, as all who drink of the water bestow on him their benedictions (comp. Num_21:17-18; Jdg_1:15).—H. W. Phillott, M.A., in Bibl. Dict.
(c) We see by lamentable experience, that every toy and trifle maketh debate, not only between dearest friends, but between nearest kinsfolk, that they can never be reconciled. And as no band knitteth faster, and bindeth closer than this, while love and liking lasteth; so no contention is so bitter, no hatred so deadly, as that of brethren and others that are near in blood, when the knot is broken and dissolved. The tender glass when it is once broken, will never be set together again. No water proveth so exceeding cold as that which was once heated exceeding hot; so no hatred proveth like to the hatred of brethren, which are often found merciless one toward another, and such as can never be appeased; as we see in the malice of Cain toward Abel. This it is that Solomon pointeth out in Pro_18:19 : “A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, and their contentions are as a bar of a castle.” For as they loved most entirely and dearly before, so when once they grow enemies, they hate one another most extremely, whose hearts are as stony walls that cannot be pierced, and as bars of iron that cannot be broken. Now as the Prophet teacheth, that it is a “good and comely thing for brethren to dwell together in unity;” so it is a noisome and unnatural thing to behold greatest envy and most mortal malice, where the greatest and nearest bands of kindred should kuit together.—W. Attersoll.
(d) A day of reconciliation! A family made one. Brethren coming together again after long separation. It is a beautiful picture. Why should it not be completed, when it needs completion, in our own day amongst ourselves? Ministers sometimes have misunderstandings, and say unkind things about one another, and exile one another from love and confidence for years. Is there never to be a day of reconciliation and Christian forgetfulness of wrong, even when positive wrong has been done? Families and households often get awry. The younger brother differs from his eldest brother; sitters fall out. One wants more than belongs to him; another is knocked to the wall because he is weak; and there comes into the heart bitterness and alienation; and often brothers and sisters never have a kind word to say about one another. Is it always to be so? Don’t merely make it up, don’t patch it up, don’t cover it up; go right down to the base. You will never be made one, until you meet at the Cross, and hear Him say, “He that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and sister, and brother.” It is in Christ’s sorrow that we are to forget our woes, in Christ’s sacrifice that we find the answer to our sin, in Christ’s union with the Father that we are to find all true and lasting reconciliation. But who is to begin? That is the wonderful question that is often asked us. Who is to begin? One would imagine that there were some very nice people about who only wanted somebody to tell them who was to begin. They want to be reconciled, only they don’t know who is to begin. I can tell you. You are! That is exactly how it is. But I am the eldest,—yes, and therefore ought to begin. But I am the youngest. Then why should the youngest be an obstinate, pig-headed child? Who are you that you should not go and throw yourself down at your brother’s feet and say, “I have done you wrong, pardon me”? Who is to begin? You! Which? Both! When? Now! Oh! beware of the morality which says, “I am looking for the opportunity, and if things should so get together—” Sir! death may be upon you before you get to the end of your long melancholy process of self-laudation and anti. Christian logic.—Joseph Parker, D.D.
THE DEATH OF AARON
(Num_20:22-29)
Let us notice—
I. The death of Aaron.
Concerning the death of this distinguished man there are three things which we may profitably consider. (a) He died—
1. As a consequence of sin. His death was not the result of disease, or of the exhaustion of the vitality of his body. It is true that he was an aged man; “Aaron was an hundred and twenty and three years old when he died in Mount Hor;” yet he died not by reason of old age and its infirmities; his death was not in the ordinary course of nature; but was a direct consequence of sin. “Aaron shall be gathered unto his people; for he shall not enter into the land which I have given unto the children of Israel, because ye rebelled against My Word at the water of Meribah.” He is distinctly called “the saint of the Lord” (Psa_106:16); yet now he must die because of his sin, without entering the Promised Land, without even beholding it. God is rigidly impartial in His dealings with His creatures. “There is no respect of persons with God.” If His people sin, they must suffer for their sin.
2. By the appointment of God. There was nothing accidental in the death of Aaron; everything connected with it was arranged by the Lord. He determined the time of his death. “Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?” “His days are determined, the number of his months are with Thee, Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.” “All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.” “Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.” “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.” “My times are in Thy hand.” The Lord determined the place of his death. “Take Aaron and Eleazar, his son, and bring them up unto Mount Hor; … and Aaron shall die there.” The circumstances of his death were also arranged by the Lord. “Take Aaron and Eleazar, his son, and bring them up unto Mount Hor; and strip Aaron of his garments,” &c. Nothing is left to accident, or chance, or human choice; all was Divinely appointed. Our Lord hath “the keys of Hades and of death.” His people cannot die prematurely or accidentally. All who seek to live in harmony with His will, all who are moving in the line of His purposes, pass hence in accordance with His arrangements. (b)
3. The death of Aaron was his introduction to life and to congenial society. “Aaron shall be gathered unto his people.” “Aaron, though he dies for his transgression, is not put to death as a malefactor, by a plague, or fire from heaven, but dies with ease and in honour. He is not ‘cut off from his people,’ as the expression usually is concerning those that die by the hand of Divine justice, but he is ‘gathered to his people,’ as one that died in the arms of Divine grace.” The expression “gathered unto his people” suggests two ideas:—
(1) Death is the way to life. The expression under consideration cannot be a mere poetical phrase for death; for in many places it is specified over and above the fact of death (see Gen_25:8; Gen_25:17; Gen_35:29; Gen_49:33; Num_20:26; Deu_32:50). Nor can the expression relate to burial; for in this sense it would not be true of Aaron, nor yet of Abraham, to whom it was also applied, nor yet of Moses. Besides which the fact of burial is in many places specified over and above the being “gathered unto his people” (see Gen_15:15; Gen_25:8-9; Gen_35:29; 1Ki_2:10; 1Ki_11:43, &c.). “The only assignable sense, therefore, is,” as Dean Alford says, “that of reference to a state of further personal existence beyond death; and the expression thus forms a remarkable testimony to the Old Testament belief in a future state.” When Aaron died he did not cease to be; but rather entered upon a larger, intenser, fuller life. When his lifeless body lay upon Mount Hor, his living spirit passed to the great assembly of the good in the presence of God. At death the body “returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto God who gave it.”
(2) Death is the way to congenial social life. “Gathered unto his people.” Aaron at death passed neither into isolation nor into the uncongenial society of strangers or aliens; but to his own people, to persons of kindred sympathies and purposes and interests. After death men go to their own place, and to their own company. The good pass swiftly to their “Father’s house,” and to the great multitude who are gathered there. O, death is not terrible to the good! It is the way by which they pass to the holy and blessed fellowship of glorified saints, the way to our permanent and joyous home, the way to the presence of our God. “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” (c)
II. The appointment of Aaron’s successor.
“Strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son.… And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son.” The sacred high-priestly vestments were taken off Aaron before his death, that they might not be defiled by contact with the dead. By putting them upon Eleazar, he was invested with the office to which they belonged. In this arrangement I discover—
1. Kindness to Aaron. It assured him—
(1) That his office would be filled; that his work would be carried on, &c. Interested in the religious welfare of the people as he was, this must have been cheering to him.
(2) That this office would be filled by his own son; that the high-priesthood would continue in his own family. This must have been a gratification to the fatherly instincts of his nature.
2. A guarantee of the continuance of the Church of God. Aaron dies; but God has a successor at hand to take Aaron’s place and to carry on his work. Moses dies leaving his great work incomplete, but Joshua, a brave and noble man, is ready to take up the great leader’s enterprize, and carry it onward to a triumphant close. The whirlwind carries the faithful and heroic Prophet of Horeb, as on the wings of some swift and strong angel, to his well-earned rest; but Elisha, a worthy successor even of so distinguished a servant of the Lord, waits to catch the falling of his master’s mantle and to prosecute his master’s mission. And now, good and faithful ministers are gathered to their fathers; but the Lord Christ ever lives, and ever raises up worthy successors to fill the vacant places. The continuance of the Church depends not upon the services of even its most gifted and holy ministers, but upon its Divine Head. This is—
(1) Humbling to our pride. God can carry on His work without our poor services. Our place will soon be filled by another, and perhaps better filled than it ever was by us.
(2) Encouraging to our faith. The work so dear to us will be carried on when we have passed away. Though the human workers die, the Divine Master and Supreme Worker ever lives, and ever carries forward His cause towards its final triumph.
III. The mourning because of Aaron’s death.
“And when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they mourned for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel.” This national mourning suggests—
1. The worth of faithful ministers. Aaron had rendered valuable services to the Israelites; he had rendered essential service in the work of their emancipation from Egyptian bondage; he had entreated God again and again for them in their rebellions; he had stood between the more than fourteen thousand dead, and the living, and by his intercession stayed the progress of the dreadful plague. But now he has gone: he will serve them no more. Well may they weep. The loss of faithful ministers is one of the greatest losses that can befall society. They render the most valuable services, they exercise the most salutary and inspiring influence in society. (d)
2. The appreciation of blessings when they are withdrawn from us, which were not valued when they were ours. While Aaron was with them the Israelites “were often murmuring against him, threatening indeed to kill him, wishing that there was an end of him, speaking against him, and in every way discouraging him in his work. But when he was dead they mourned for him; they found their loss when it was too late to value him. This is but an example of human nature. We very seldom value our chiefest blessings until we are made to feel their worth by the loss of them. It has often happened in the case of the Christian minister and congregation, that he has been undervalued while he was testifying God’s truth, and has been much mourned for when taken away.” (Comp. Eze_33:30-33).
“Like birds whose beauties languish, half-conceal’d
Till mounted on the wing, their glossy plumes
Expanded, shine with azure, green, and gold;
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!”—Young.
Shakspeare also gives luminous expression to this truth:—
“It so falls out, That what we have we prize not to the worth, Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost, Why then we rack the value; then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours.”
Let us appreciate the gifts of Heaven while we have them, &c.
In conclusion, learn—
1. The universality of death. The gifted, the great, the beautiful, the holy, all die. We must die. Let us live that death shall be to us great gain. (e)
2. The imperfection of the Aaronic priesthood (see Heb_7:11; Heb_7:18-19; Heb_7:23; Heb_7:28; Heb_8:7; Heb_9:25; Heb_10:1-4; Heb_10:11).
3. The perfection of the Priesthood of Christ (see Heb_7:22-28; Heb_8:6; Heb_9:23-28; Heb_10:10-14).
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) Behold then the three persons, Aaron, Moses, and Eleazar, going up the mountain. The first is distinguished by his priestly habit. He is clad in the mitre, the ephod, the fine linen, the Urim and the Thummim, and those bells, which formerly when hoard within the holy of holies told of his life, now seem sounding the signal for Death to meet him on the summit, and their tinkle lessening up the mountain strikes like a death-watch in the ear of the people of the great congregation assembled before their tents to trace the progress and to witness the event, not a murmur or groan heard throughout them all, but millions, it may be, weeping in silence. See with what calm, majestic, uninterrupted and unreverted steps the three pursue their journey, talking perhaps of that Promised Land which one of them is never to see, which another is to see from a mountain in Moab, and which the third only is to enter, or talking of that Better Country to which the first is so near. Mark the eager look cast forward by Aaron toward the top of the hill, as if he expected the Angel of Death to be waiting for him there; but when be gains the summit, lo! all is empty and sternly silent, the victim is there but no wood and no fire for the offering; one mighty sacrificer has arrived, but the other is not yet come to keep the dread engagement. Turn then ere he comes, and see from the mount ten thousand times ten thousand torn, ruptured, rent, serrated and savage hills standing up as witnesses to the covenanted meeting and catastrophe at hand; not a blade of grass or drop of water in view, nothing but a bare and blasted wilderness of sand and atone, and thunder-split crag, as if a flood of fire had crossed, and torn, and tortured it into the similitude of hell; including the vast valley of Arabah which unites the Red and the Dead Seas, both of which are visible, and on its western side the great sandy desert, surmounted in the extreme distance by the Sinaitic range. Mark the last glance cast by Aaron to the camp and the multitude far below, a glance speaking of sorrow and of remorse too, since it is owing to his sin at Meribah that he is dying so soon, and dying so publicly, but speaking still more of submission, confidence, and hope in the mercy of God. See the slow and solemn manner in which the hand of Moses, although the younger brother, tenderly, like a mother her babe at eventide, strips Aaron of his garments. And behold now the high priest clothed only with his long grey hair, as is that ardent sun overhead with his old beams, laying himself down upon the hill, watching with an eye of love and pride his son Eleazar, as Moses arrays him with ephod, and linen, and breast-plate, and mitre; and as the bright rays from the Urim and Thummim flash for the last time upon his dim and dying eye, blessing his noble son whose ornament they are henceforward to be, and blessing the brother with whom he has so long held sweet counsel and united in marvellous achievement; and then fixing his look upward as if waiting for the advent and the dart of his adversary, who comes not; but instead there is heard a “still, small voice,” saying, “Come up hither,” and lo! a dead body lies on the granite of Mount Hor, and a living soul, suddenly clothed by the hands of angels with robes that shall never be stripped away, has joined the great assembly in the heavens—G. Gilfillan, M.A.
(b) We strive, oftentimes almost unconsciously perhaps, to re-arrange or re-ordain particular circumstances, and even whole scenes in our life and in the lives of others. And with a still more importunate and sorrowful eagerness do we seek to have some power in arranging for life’s close. We would not dare to take the key of death in our own hand, but we would touch it while it lies in His. Not now, or not there, or not thus, we are always saying.
“NOT NOW,” we say, when the father is called to leave the family of which he is the whole stay. “Let him live, let a few weeks elapse let his family be provided for, let his work be done!” It is done, is the answer, His fatherless children are provided for; I have taught him to leave them with Me. “The Father of the fatherless, the Husband of the widow, is God in His holy habitation.”
“Not now,” we say, when the mother has heard the home-call, and with a calmness and courage greater than those of the soldier in battle, is rising above all her cares, and becoming a child again, at the threshold of the heavenly home. “Oh, not now! Who will check the waywardness, encourage the virtues, receive the confidences, soothe the little sorrows, and train the loves of those infant hearts? Who will teach the evening prayer, and listen to the Sabbath hymn? Who can give a mother’s care, and feel a mother’s love?” “I,” saith the Shepherd, “I will gather the lambs with mine arm, and carry them in My bosom. I will forget no prayer of the dying mother’s heart. I will treasure in My heart the yearnings of her life over her children, and the unutterable compassions of her dying hour; and when many years have sped, and she has been long in heaven, these children will remember her in their holiest and happiest moments, and by their walk and their work will be proving that she did not live in vain, that she ‘finished the work that was given her to do.’ ”
Or, we say, “Not there, oh, not there! away on the sea—a thousand miles from land—let him not die there, and be dropped into the unfathomed grave, where the unstable waves must be his only monument, and the winds the sole mourners of the place! Or not in some distant city or far-off land—strangers around his bed, strangers closing his eyes, and then carrying him to a stranger’s grave. Let him come home and die amid the whisperings and breathings of the old unquenchable love.” “He is going home,” is the answer, “and going by the best and only way. I can open the gate Beautiful in any part of the earth or sea. I can set up the mystic ladder, the top of which reaches to heaven, in the loneliest island, at the furthest ends of the earth, and your friends will flee to the shelter of My presence all the more fully because yours is far away.”
Or, we say, “Not thus, not through such agonies of body, or faintings of spirit, or tremblings of faith—not in unconsciousness—not without dying testimonies. Let there be outward as well as inward peace. Let mention be made of Thy goodness. Let there be foretellings and foreshadowings of the glory to which, as we trust, they are going. Oh, shed down the light, the fragrancy of heaven upon their dying bed!” The answer is, “They are there, and you are so dull of sense that you perceive them not. Your friend is filled with the ‘peace that passeth understanding,’ and safe in the everlasting arms.”
Thus, brethren, the time, and the place, and the circumstances, are all arranged by the wisdom and the will of Him who holds the keys, and we could not, even if we had our own will and way, make anything better than it is in the perfect plan. Better! everything would be worse—inconceivably worse if we had the keys. Let us trust them, with a loyal loving trust, with Him who graciously says to us, “Fear not;” One who, in this as in all other thing, will treat us and give us according to our faith.—Alex. Raleigh, D.D.
(c) Death is but a going home. A child is away at school, and the vacation is near at band; and you may be sure that the father and mother long to see the child more than the child wants to see father and mother. So, according to the good old custom, the father takes the carriage, and wends his way to the school, perhaps with, perhaps without, intimations to the child of his coming. In the midst of his tasks on the last day, the child is suddenly greeted by the voice and presence of his father; and no sooner are the first salutations exchanged than the father says, “Are your things ready? We go tomorrow.” Wine is not so sparkling as the Joy in the child’s heart. He can neither eat, nor sleep, nor play. The thought that his father has come, and that he is going home to see his mother, and brothers, and sisters, has quite intoxicated him. By such glorious images as this God is pleased to represent our departure from the present life. The Lord Jesus Christ shall come to our poor old weather-beaten school-house in this world, and say to us, “Come home! you are wanted.”
Heaven is not, then, a great bleak shore to which you are driven by the storm, and where you are cast among savage inhabitants. Heaven is a blessed place of rest. It is your home. You have friends there, the chiefest among whom is He that loved you, that gave Himself for you, that has ever watched over you during your earthly pilgrimage, and that soon, very soon, will come for you, as already He has for yours. They are glorious there; and in all their glory, if they could but speak a word to us, would it be such a poor stumbling word as that which they spoke in the hour of death? If they could speak to us from the eternal world, what hope and consolation would they give us!—H. W. Beecher.
(d) Death is, in every case, an event of most momentous consequences.… But the death of a minister of the Gospel, in addition to the consequences which affect his own destiny, involves others which extend to his flock. If he has been faithful unto death, his decease is in mercy to himself, but it must at the same time be in judgment to his church. The testimony of a witness for God to an unbelieving generation is finished—a herald of salvation is withdrawn—an ambassador of Christ is recalled—a light of the world, which has guided many, and might have guided more, into the haven of eternal peace, is extinguished. It is not the death of a friend merely, however valued, or a relative, however dear, whose affection soothed the sorrows of time, and softened the rugged path of life; but it is the removal of one whose solicitude watched for the soul, promoted its salvation, and diffused, or aimed to diffuse, a beneficial influence over its eternal existence. What arithmetic can estimate the greatness of such a calamity? Instead of that living voice which, both by the eloquence of preaching, and the still holier and more elevating eloquence of prayer, often lifted the rapt hearers to heaven, and matured them for its glories, they have nothing now but the cold and silent marble, which perpetuates, with his honoured name, their own incalculable loss.—J. Angell James.
(e) All must die. The fact is so old and every day, that, like the sun, few people think of it or look at it. It is otherwise, indeed, with those who see the solemn reality approaching themselves, and who then, for the first time, feel its strangeness, its importance, its awfulness, and how little prepared they are for it. They resemble one who has fallen asleep on a railway, and, starting up, sees the engine just upon him, and has hardly time, by one wild cry, to commend himself to the mercy of God, ere he is crushed into non-existence. Something like this was the cry of Hoffman, the German writer, who, when after a thoughtless career he felt himself approaching his end, and was told to prepare for death, turned his face away and said, “And must I at last begin to think about God?’ Truly says his biographer, “Sorrowfuller words were never spoken by man.” Far from us be it to say that these cries are never answered—we believe that, when sincere, they always are. But, alas! how foolish to delay their utterance! how foolish to expect that there shall always be time given to utter them! and how much wiser to close with Christ’s offer of mercy now, and now, ere it be too late, to begin to think seriously, lovingly, prayerfully, and hopefully of God!—G. Gilfillan, M.A.
THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT
(Num_20:23-29)
I. The common destiny of man.
“Aaron shall be gathered unto his people.” At death the body is gathered to the generations that are gone. One generation is buried in the dust of another, and future generations will be entombed in our dust. When one thinks of this, how worthless appear all the mere secular distinctions of this world! There are “kings and counsellors of the earth,” &c. (Job_3:14-15; Job_3:19). Thither you and I are going. But not as to a final resting place. This Bible assures me that all that ever have left us are living now—thinking, active, conscious; and that the good who are living are living in the conscious presence of Infinite Love—in the heaven of the blest. “I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead,” &c. (Rev_14:13).
II. The rigorousness of moral law.
Aaron was to die. Why? Because of a certain something which took place at Meribah, Moses and Aaron were both excluded from the Promised Land. The law demands punishment for sin even in a good man. Moral law seems to be as immutable as God Himself. Aaron went up into Mount Hor, and there he died. And his death proclaims in thunder the fact that however distinguished a man may be for his excellencies, however high he may be in the Church of God, his sin shall not go unpunished.
III. The termination of life in the midst of labour.
The work entrusted to Moses and Aaron was to conduct the children of Israel through the wilderness into the Promised Land; and this work was unfinished. We nearly all die with our work unfinished. The farmer dies when he has only half ploughed his field; the merchant dies, &c. We are not surprised when an old tree, though prolific in its day, dies, for it dies by the law of decay; nor are we astonished that an unfruitful tree should be cut down, for it is a cumberer of the ground; but we are astonished that a tree, with its branches full of sap, with its boughs laden with fruit, with thousands reposing under its shadow, should be struck with a thunderbolt from heaven. “Thy path,” O God, “is in the great waters,” &c.
IV. God’s agency in man’s dissolution.
Why did Aaron die? He was not worn out with age. Not because there was disease rankling in his system; not because there was any external violence applied to him. Why, then, did he die? The Great One determines that he shall die, and he dies. This is always the philosophy of a man’s death. Philosophy, the Bible, and reason all say, “man dies because the Great One has determined that he should die.” If God has determined that the frailest organisation shall live for ever, that organisation will live for ever; and so also, if He determines it, the most robust, the strong and vigorous, dies in a moment (see Job_7:1; Job_14:5; Job_14:20; Psa_90:3; Job_1:21).
V. The promptitude with which Providence supplies the places of the dead.
Aaron must die, but there is Eleazar standing by his side ready to step into his place. This is the order of Providence. A merchant dies, and another man stands by his side ready to carry on his business. A lawyer dies, &c. A statesman dies, &c. A minister leaves a pulpit, his voice becomes silent in death, and the people mourn; but God has another minister standing by ready to step into the place of the departed, and to carry on his work. Oh, how this encourages my faith in the progress of Divine truth in this world!.…
But it is certainly humbling to our pride. My friend, the world can do without thee. Thou art but a blade in the field; the landscape will bloom without thee.
VI. The trial of human friendships.
Moses and Eleazar were very closely related to Aaron. Moses was more than a brother to Aaron. There was a spiritual kindredship between them. There were mental affinities and spiritual affections. They were devoted to the same great purpose, they had the same plan, they were the children of the same God; and here is their trial—Aaron must die.…
Can it be that the great God of love, who has made us to love, and who has disposed us to give our affections to certain persons, should, by our love, make us so often wretched? There is to be a renewal of real spiritual friendship. The separation which takes place in the death of true Christian friends is more in form than in reality. In truth we become more really friends by the death separation. Death cannot destroy our loving memories of them. Death does not kill—nay, it seems but to intensify our affection. We are one—for ever one.
VII. The painful recognition by society of its greatest losses.
The people “mourned for Aaron thirty days.”
The two greatest blessings on this earth are—the Bible and good men. I need not tell you the value of the Bible, for you know it. Glorious Book for the intellect, for the imagination, for the heart, for the world, for all ages! Blessed be God for the Bible! But next to the Bible, we value good men. Good men are as fountains welling up in the desert through which you are passing; they are lights in abounding darkness; they are salt which counteracts our tendency to corruption. But the Christian minister is the best of all men, and his loss is the greatest of all losses. A man who not only has the spirit of the Bible in him, but who has given his intellect, his genius, his powers of mind to the study of the Word of God, in order to present that Word to all classes of men, dealing out a word in season to each—a word of advice to the enquiring, of counsel to the thoughtless, of caution to the young, of comfort and help to the poor and suffering—I know of no man who is rendering such a service to society and to humanity as he. Such a man was Aaron. He was more; he was an orator. God says, “My servant Aaron can speak well.” But he dies. His eloquent tongue is silent in death; and they wept thirty days.—David Thomas, D.D. Abridged from “The Christian World,” March 28th, 1861.
THE REMOVAL OF A DEVOTED SERVANT OF GOD
(Num_20:25-29)
In this death there were—
I. The express appointment and arrangement of God.
The departure of God’s servants is never accidental or unforeseen.
II. The last attentions and ministrations of pious friendship.
Such ministrations and attentions are a privilege to—
1. Those about to depart.
2. Those who for a season are to survive.
III. The tokens of Divine favour.
In one respect Aaron’s death was a sign of Divine displeasure, but this displeasure was only partial. He was allowed to go to the place of his death in his robes of office.
III. The pledge of perpetuity to the Divine cause.
A successor was immediately, authoritatively, and unquestionably secured to the office that Aaron held.
V. The prospect of immortal happiness.
Mount Hor was near enough to permit a vision of Canaan.—J. Parsons. From “The Biblical Museum.”
THE SORROWS OF BEREAVEMENT
(Num_20:29)
What an impressive scene is this! a whole nation bowed down by one common grief. The many thousands of Israel are mourning the death of one of the most noble and useful of men.
We too shall soon “be gathered unto our people.” Like waves which chase each other to the shore, or like clouds which on the heels of each other fast travel o’er the face of the blue heavens, are we treading in the wake of “the great departed,” and soon shall arrive at the solemn bourne of our pilgrimage.
“Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.”
—Longfellow.
The tears of this vast congregation are sadly suggestive. Let us look into the reasons of the mourning of this nation.
I. A great and good man had been removed from their midst.
“Aaron was dead.”
1. He was a holy man. The lustre of his life is clouded by a few imperfections and sins; but he was unquestionably a good man. “Aaron, the saint of the Lord” (Psa_106:16).
2. He was an eloquent man. “Aaron the Levite—I know that he can speak well” (Exo_4:14). This great gift he had used in the highest service. It had been employed in obtaining the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage; in speaking unto them words of reproof, counsel, instruction, and exhortation; and in speaking unto God on their behalf.
3. He filled a position of the highest honour and of the greatest importance.
Under God he was the religious head of this nation. To him was granted to approach nearer to the Most High than any man of that age, except Moses. More than once his intercessions had averted the Divine anger from the guilty people. But at the summons of God he has left them for ever. “Aaron was dead.” (a)
II. A great and good man had been removed while toiling for their welfare.
Aaron was not a useless member of this great congregation; he had not become unfit for service; he was fulfilling the important functions of his sacred office. Yet God called him away, and his “purposes were broken off.” And still men are called away by God in the midst of service and usefulness. The statesman, the minister, the author, the physician, the parent, are sometimes thus summoned hence. To us there is much mystery in this. We cannot explain it; but we can reverently bow before it. “Even so, Father; for so it seemeth good in Thy sight.” (b)
III. A great and good man had been removed when apparently his services could hardly be spared.
To our poor mind it seems that Israel could not afford to lose Aaron. We think that they needed his experience to counsel them, his faith to plead with God for them, his brave spirit to encourage them and to assist in leading them to the Promised Land. But God is independent of even the most distinguished and useful men. When such men are removed, here is our encouragement—God ever lives and works; Christ ever lives and works; and “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth.” (c)
IV. A great and good man had been removed, and in his removal many had parted with a true and loving friend.
In that sorrowing nation, I have no doubt, there were not a few who had found in Aaron a kindred spirit, and rejoiced in the friendship of his affectionate heart. And more than this, Moses was his brother, and Eleazar and Ithamar were his sons. But the brother, the sons, the friends of Aaron, must all take their leave of him for ever in this world. The death of a true friend is one of the sorest sorrows that our hearts are called upon to suffer; and wrings from us the bitterest tears.
Conclusion.
1. Prize the friends and the great and good men whom God sends amongst us while they are yet with us. Israel did not feel the worth of Aaron until he was taken from them. Let us avoid their error, &c.
2. Be thankful for Christianity. It takes the sting and the bitterness from death. It reveals a blessed immortality, and bestows the title to it. (d)
3. Remember that we too must pass away from this world. “It is appointed unto men once to die.” “Here have we no continuing city.”
4. Live as “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Our home is not here; our rest is not here. “Our citizenship is in heaven.” “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,” &c. (Mat_6:19-21). “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” So death will be great gain.
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) The world can have no greater or richer boon conferred on it than the gift of a great man. The history of the world is but the history of its great men. God carries on society by such. They are the hinges on which it has turned. They measure whole ages for themselves. They are the mountain summits in the great path of human progress—the most towering landmarks of the past, and the hopes of the future. Such, too, are the princes in Israel—great men who are not the property of a denomination but of the Church, with a breadth and richness of intellect, with a nobleness of character, and a devotion to great principles that cannot be confined to the range of one sect, whose movements stir the whole Church of God, and whose departure leaves a mighty gap. We admire and honour such men wherever we find them. We thank God for every great, noble-hearted, and honest servant of Christ. In proportion as the service rendered by such persons is real and valuable, do we learn to think highly of them, to depend on them, and to feel as if we knew not how their loss is to be supplied.—John Riddell.
(b) If we believe in God, in a God of order and wisdom, and especially if we believe in Jesus, the infinite support of our life, we dare not doubt for one moment, that when a great or good man dies, his whole appointed work on earth was done, that Providence had no more for him to do, that all he had to do for the world, or for his family, was completed and summed up. Now a worthy and beloved parent does not cease his influence when he dies; he rules his children still, in many cases with mightier power than by his living voice. Well may we feel that he has left such memories and impressions of his views and principles written on their hearts, and now hallowed to perpetual remembrance by the sanctifying power of death, that he, though dead, shall guide them by their very relation to him. Their very love to him indeed must make them mourn; but still, no loss is irreparable; no human loss is absolute.—Ibid.
(c) Let all this carry up our love, and trust, and loyalty, to Jesus alone. It is the visible mark of inferiority of all others, that they die. However great, they are limited in their greatness. They have had but a certain work to do, a limited power to put forth. They could not serve the continuous wants of the world—they do their little work or their great work, and then they are removed. Their longer continuance might turn out a hindrance. It is the unapproachable distinction of Jesus, that He remains for ever the Prince of Peace, the grand Head of the nation, to whom all earthly princes are subject. He is “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” Over him death hath no power; the taint of corruption cannot infect Him. No voice shall bewail His failure, no nation weep His funeral, no cry of a pierced world tell that its hope and star is gone. He liveth and reigneth for ever. He is our refuge still in times of trouble. Friends die and great men disappear from the stage; but the Saviour remains with sympathy to dry up all our tears, with power to sustain under the loss of earthly supports. As the hearts we cling to become still, then He opens all His heart to us, and in contact with it our own heart grows still and calm, and learns that, in taking from us the earthly prop. He was but drawing us nearer Himself.—Ibid.
(d) Life and immortality have been brought clearly to light in the Gospel—in Him who hath Himself risen “the firstfruits of them that sleep.” And hence the Christian alone looks with cheerful hopefulness in death. Others may face it with steadfastness or calm—he alone lies down to sleep in hope. Not only without fear, but in joy he enters the dark valley, and friends lay him in the narrow prison-house, “dust to dust, in the hope of a joyful resurrection.” “For this corruptible must put on incorruption,” &c. (1Co_15:53-57).
It is this fact of Resurrection which leads the apostle to say that we who remain alive should not sorrow for our dead ones, “even as others which have no hope” (1Th_4:13). Why, indeed, should we thus sorrow, who believe that as “Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him?” They who had no such faith, might well weep as they buried their Dead out of sight, and knew not whether they should evermore see the light of life. But why should we hopelessly weep for those who are resting with the Lord—who have gone before to be for ever with Him? Why, indeed, but for the faintness of our hearts and the weakness of our flesh? Let us sorrow rather for ourselves, that our sight is so dim and our faith so dull—that we are so little able to look beyond things which are “seen and temporal” to those which are “unseen and eternal.” The Living, rather than the Dead, may have a claim upon our sorrowful regard. For the Dead have gone beyond our anxiety. They have entered into their rest. They are asleep in Jesus; while the Living, who are around us, and with us, may be wandering far from Him, may be wounding Him by their sins, may be “crucifying Him afresh and putting Him to an open shame.” It is as if we were to weep for the child resting in its father’s bosom, sheltered in a happy home, rather than for the child who has gone astray in darkness, and cannot find its homeward way. It is as if we were to sorrow for the mariner who has found a safe harbour, and rests in peace, rather than for the storm-tossed sailor in the open main, around whom the billows may be heaving high, and over whom the sky may be darkening to his doom. No, brethren, let us not sorrow for those who are with God, safe in a Father’s house, sheltered in the haven of eternal rest. But let us be anxious and careful for the living, that we may help them, and guide them by God’s blessing in a right way; and for ourselves, that we may “know the things which belong unto our peace, before they are hid from our eyes.”—Principal Tulloch, D.D.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain Num 20:10-11
Num 20:10-11
(with Psa 106:32-33)
Read full note →
This is a memorable incident in the Jews’ history, and it is rich in warning to us at this day. Moses had failed in his duty towards God, and that in three particulars. (1) He had failed in strict obedience. God had bidden him speak to the rock, and he had smitten it, smitten it twice. (2) He had shown temper, used hard language. "Hear now, ye rebels." (3) He had taken to himself the credit of supplying the Israelites with water. "Must we fetch water for you out of the rock?"
I. The first lesson to be learned from Moses at Meribah is the danger of departing, in the least jot or tittle, from any law of God.
II. The second is the immense importance attached to temperate speech, the necessity of keeping a check on temper and not letting ourselves be moved to hot and angry words. The want of self-control was very heavily visited upon Moses and upon "Aaron, the saint of the Lord." Because of it they were shut out of Canaan.
III. The scene at the rock of Meribah is further useful as carrying our thoughts upwards to Him who is the source of all our hopes, the nourishment of our soul, the very life of our religion, the Lord Jesus Christ. The rock in the desert was but a type and a shadow; the reality it typified is represented in Jesus Christ. All other waters after a while must fail; the water that Christ can give "shall be in us as a well of water, springing up unto everlasting life."
R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 3rd series, p. 100.
References: Num 20:11.—J. Vaughan, Sermons, 11th series, p. 166; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xvi., p. 157; T. R. Stevenson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 170.
Num 20:23-29
I. We may learn a salutary lesson from the death of Aaron in its merely literal bearing. Aaron, the high-priest, had to ascend Mount Hor clad in his priestly robes of office; but he must be stripped of them there, because he must die there. He could not carry his dignity or the emblems of it into the next world. He must lay them down at the grave’s brink. There is nothing which the world gives that men can carry with them when death lays hold of them. Even all which outwardly pertains to spiritual dignity, and which brings men into relation with things that are imperishable and eternal, must be left behind, and the individual man, as God’s accountable creature, must appear before his Maker in judgment. There is one thing imperishable and one dignity which even death cannot tarnish. The imperishable thing is the life which the Spirit of God imparts to the soul, and which connects the soul with God. The deathless dignity is that of being children of God.
II. Aaron must be stripped of his robes, and his son clad with them in his stead. This reminds us that while the priests under the law were not suffered to continue by reason of death, yet the office of the priesthood did not lapse. Aaron’s robes were not buried with him. His successor was provided. Yet the very thought that he needed a successor, that the office must be transmitted from one to another, leads us to think of the contrast which the Apostle draws between the priests under the law and Him who abideth always. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons, p. 599.
References: Num 20:14-21.—Parker, vol. iii., p. 258. Num 20:17.—W. Page Roberts, Reasonable Service, p. 148. Num 20:22-29.—G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. ii., p. 132.
Num 20:27-28
I. The first and most superficial aspect of death is that it is the close of an earthly career. There could be no question as to the prominence of Aaron’s career. (1) In the great work of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt to the confines of the Promised Land Aaron is only second to Moses. (2) Aaron was the first high-priest of the chosen people. His consecration was of itself calculated to awe the minds of Israel, and it was followed by high sanctions of his office, which must have done so still more.
II. Aaron was morally a weak man. He had no such grasp of principle as would enable him to hold out against strong pressure. His weakness became conspicuous on the critical occasion of Moses going up to Sinai to receive the sacred law. Aaron was left below in virtual command, in a position of responsibility for which, as the event proved, he was not fitted. The Greeks had a proverb that leadership will show what a man really is, and so it was with Aaron. His weakness is implied in the allusion in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "for that he himself also was compassed with infirmity."
III. Nothing is more noticeable in the account of Aaron’s death than his deliberate preparation for it. He did not let death come on him; he went to meet it. There was a twofold motive in the act of Moses in stripping Aaron of his garments. (1) It showed that the office of the high-priesthood did not depend on the life of any single man, and (2) it reminded Aaron personally of the solemn truth of the utter solitariness of the soul in death.
IV. The phrase of Moses, "Aaron was gathered to his people," seems to point to a world in which the bygone generations of men still live, a world of the existence of which God’s ancient people were well assured, though they knew much less of it than we.
H. P. Liddon, The Family Churchman, April 27th, 1887.
References: Num 20:28.—C. J. Vaughan, Sunday Magazine, 1873, p. 169. Num 20:29.—Parker, vol. iii., p. 267. Num 20, Num 21—J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 285. Num 21:4.—J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 187; Parker, vol. iii., p. 276. Num 21:4, Num 21:5.—F. Strutt, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 161. Num 21:4, Num 21:9.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 156; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1722. Num 21:5.—Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the Old Testament, p. 14. Num 21:5-9.—Parker, vol. iii., p. 287. Num 21:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 285.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Num 20:1 - Num 20:13.
Numbers
THE WATERS OF MERIBAH
Read full note →
Num 20:1 - Num 20:13.
Kadesh had witnessed the final trial and failure of the generation that came out of Egypt; now we see the first trial and failure of the new generation, thirty-seven years after, on the same spot. Deep silence shrouds the history of these dreary years; but, probably, the congregation was broken up, and small parties roamed over the country, without purpose or hope, while Moses and a few of the leaders kept by the tabernacle. There is a certain emphasis in the phrase of the first verse of this chapter, ‘the children of Israel, even the whole congregation,’ which suggests that this was the first reassembling of the scattered units since the last act of the ‘whole congregation.’ ‘The first month’ was, then, the first of the fortieth year, and the gathering was either in obedience to the summons of Moses, who knew that the fixed time had now come, or was the result of common knowledge of the fact. In any case, we have here the first act of a new epoch, and the question to be tried is whether the new men are any better than the old. It is this which gives importance to the event, and explains the bitterness of Moses at finding the old spirit living in the children. It was his trial as well as theirs. He resumed the functions which had substantially been in abeyance for a generation, and by his conduct showed that he had become unfit for the new form which the leadership must take with the invasion of Canaan.
I. We note the old murmurings on the lips of the new generation. The lament of a later prophet fits these hereditary grumblers,-’In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction.’ The place where they reassembled might have taught them the sin of unbelief; their parents’ graves should have enforced the lesson. But the long years of wandering, and two millions of deaths, had been useless. The weather-beaten but sturdy strength of the four old men, the only survivors, might have preached the wisdom of trust in the God in whose ‘favour is life.’ But the people ‘had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.’ The old cuckoo-cry, which had become so monotonous from their fathers, is repeated, with differences, not in their favour. They do not, indeed, murmur directly against God, because they regard Moses and Aaron as responsible. ‘Why,’ say they, ‘have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord?’ They seem to use that name with a touch of pride in their relation to God, while destitute of any real obedience, and so they show the first traces of the later spirit of the nation. They have acquired cattle while living in the oases of the wilderness, and they are anxious about them. They acknowledge the continuity of national life in their question, ‘Wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt?’ though most of them had been born in the wilderness. The fear that moved their fathers to unbelief was more reasonable and less contemptible than this murmuring, which ignores God all but utterly, and is ready to throw up everything at the first taste of privation.
It is a signal instance of the solemn law by which the fathers’ sins are inherited by the children who prove themselves heirs to their ancestors by repeating their deeds. It is fashionable now to deny original sin, and equally fashionable to affirm ‘heredity,’ which is the same thing, put into scientific language. There is such a thing as national character persistent through generations, each unit of which adds something to the force of the tendencies which he receives and transmits, but which never are so omnipotent as to destroy individual guilt, however they may lighten it.
Note, too, the awful power of resistance to God’s educating possessed by our wills. The whole purpose of these men’s lives, thus far, had been to fit them for being God’s instruments, and for the reception of His blessing. The desert was His school for body and mind, where muscles and wills were to be braced, and solitude and expectation might be nurses of lofty thoughts, and in the silence God’s voice might sound. What better preparation of a hardy race of God-trusting heroes could there have been, and what came of it all? Failure all but complete! The instrument tempered with so much care has its edge turned at the first stroke. The old sore breaks out at the old spot. Man’s will has an awful power to thwart God’s training; and of all the sad mysteries of this sad mysterious world, this is the saddest and most mysterious, and is the root of all other sadness and mystery,-that a man can set his pin-point of a will against that great Will which gives him all his power, and when God beckons can say, ‘I will not,’ and can render His most sedulous discipline ineffectual.
Note, too, that trivial things are large enough to hide plain duties and bright possibilities. These men knew that they had come to Kadesh for the final assault, which was to recompense all their hardships. Their desert training should have made them less resourceless and desperate when water failed; but the hopes of conquest and the duty of trust cannot hold their own against present material inconvenience. They even seem to make bitter mockery of the promises, when they complain that Kadesh is ‘no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates,’ which were the fruits brought by the spies,-as if they had said, ‘So this stretch of waterless sand is the fertile land you talked of, is it? This is all that we have got by reassembling here.’ Do we not often feel that the drought of Kadesh is more real than the grapes of Eshcol? Are we not sometimes tempted to bitter comparisons of the fair promises with the gloomy realities? Does our courage never flag, nor our faith falter, nor swirling clouds of doubt hide the inheritance from our weary and tear-filled eyes? He that is without sin may cast the first stone at these men; but whoever knows his own weak heart will confess that, if he had been among that thirsty crowd, he would, most likely, have made one of the murmurers.
II. Note God’s repetition of His old gift to the new generation. Moses makes no attempt to argue with the people, but casts himself in entreaty before the door of the Tabernacle, as if crushed and helpless in face of this heart-breaking proof of the persistent obstinacy of the old faults. God’s answer recalls the former miracle at Rephidim {Exo 17:1 - - Exo 17:7} in the early days of the march, when the same cries had come from lips now silent, and the rock, smitten at God’s command by the rod which had parted the sea, yielded water. The only differences are that here Moses is bid to speak, not to smite; and that the miracle is to be done before all the congregation, instead of before the elders only. Both variations seem to have the common purpose of enhancing the wonder, and confirming the authority of Moses, to a generation to whom the old deliverances were only hearsay, and many of whom were in contact with the leader for the first time. The fact that we have here the beginning of a new epoch, and a new set of people, goes far to explain the resemblance of the two incidents, without the need of supposing, with many critics, that they are but different versions of one ‘legend.’ The repetition of scarcity of water is not wonderful; the recurrence of the murmurings is the sad proof of the unchanged temper of the people, and the repetition of the miracle is the merciful witness of the patience of God. His charity ‘is not easily provoked, is not soon angry,’ but stoops to renew gifts which had been so little appreciated that the remembrance of them failed to cure distrust. Unbelief is obstinate, but His loving purpose is more persistent still. Rephidim should have made the murmuring at Kadesh impossible; but, if it does not, then He will renew the mercy, though it had been once wasted, and will so shape the second gift that it shall recall the first, if haply both may effect what one had failed to do. When need is repeated, the supply is forthcoming, even when it is demanded by sullen and forgetful distrust. We can wear out men’s patience, but God’s is inexhaustible. The same long-suffering Hand that poured water from the rock for two generations of distrustful murmurers still lavishes its misused gifts on us, to win us to late repentance, ‘and upbraideth not’ for our slowness to learn the lessons of His mercies.
III. Note the breaking down at last of the long-tried leader’s patience. It is in striking contrast with the patience of God. Psa 106:32 - Psa 106:33, describes the sin of Moses as twofold; namely, anger and speaking ‘unadvisedly.’ His harsh words, so unlike his pleadings on the former occasion of rebellion at Kadesh, have a worse thing than an outburst of temper in them. ‘Must we fetch you water out of the rock?’ arrogates to himself the power of working miracles. He forgets that he was as much an instrument, and as little a force, as his own rod. His angry scolding betrays wounded personal importance, and annoyance at rebellion against his own authority, rather than grief at the people’s distrust of God, and also a distinct clouding over of his own consciousness of dependence for all his power on God, and an impure mingling of thoughts of self. The same turbid blending of anger and self-regard impelled his arm to the passionately repeated strokes, which, in his heat, he substituted for the quiet words that he was bidden to speak. The Palestinian Tar gum says very significantly, that at the first stroke the rock dropped blood, thereby indicating the tragic sinfulness of the angry blow. How unworthy a representative of the long-suffering God was this angry man! ‘The servant of the Lord must not strive,’ nor give the water with which he is entrusted, with contempt or anger in his heart. That gift requires meek compassion in its stewards.
But the failure of Moses’ patience was only too natural. The whole incident has to be studied as the first of a new era, in which both leader and led were on their trial. During the thirty-seven years of waiting, Moses had had but little exercise of that part of his functions, and little experience of the people’s temper. He must have looked forward anxiously to the result of the desert hardening; he must have felt more remote from and above the children than he did to their parents, his contemporaries who had come with him from Egypt, and so his disappointment must have been proportionately keen, when the first difficulty that rose revealed the old spirit in undiminished force. For forty years he had been patient, and ready to swallow mortifications and ignore rebellion against himself, and to offer himself for his people; but now, when men whom he had seen in their swaddling-clothes showed the same stiff-necked distrust as had killed their fathers, the breaking-point of his patience was reached. That burst of anger is a grave symptom of lessened love for the sinful murmurers; and lessened love always means lessened power to guide and help. The people are not changed, but Moses is. He has no longer the invincible patience, the utter self-oblivion, the readiness for self-sacrifice, which had borne him up of old, and so he fails. We may learn from his failure that the prime requisite for doing God’s work is love, which cannot be moved to anger nor stirred to self-assertion, but meets and conquers murmuring and rebellion by patient holding forth of God’s gift, and is, in some faint degree, an echo of His endless long-suffering. He who would serve men must, sleeping or waking, carry them in his heart, and pity their sin. They who would represent God to men, and win men for God, must be ‘imitators of God . . .and walk in love.’ If the bearer of the water of life offers it with ‘Hear, ye rebels,’ it will flow untasted.
IV. Note the sentence on the leader, and the sad memorial name. Moses is blamed for not believing nor sanctifying God. His self-assertion in his unadvised speech came from unbelief, or forgetfulness of his dependence. He who claims power to himself, denies it to God. Moses put himself between God and the people, not to show but to hide God; and, instead of exalting God’s holiness before them by declaring Him to be the giver, he intercepted the thanks and diverted them to himself. But was his momentary failure not far too severely punished? To answer that question, we must recur to the thought of the importance of this event as beginning a new chapter, and as a test for both Moses and Israel. His failure was a comparatively small matter in itself; and if the sentence is regarded merely as the punishment of a sin, it appears sternly disproportionate to the offence. Were eighty years of faithful service not sufficient to procure the condonation of one moment’s impatience? Is not that harsh treatment? But a tiny blade above-ground may indicate the presence of a poisonous root, needing drastic measures for its extirpation; and the sentence was not only punishment for sin, but kind, though punitive, relief from an office for which Moses had no longer, in full measure, his old qualifications. The subsequent history does not show any withdrawal of God’s favour from him, and certainly it would be no very sore sorrow to be freed from the heavy load, carried so long. There is disapprobation, no doubt, in the sentence; but it treats the conduct of Moses rather as a symptom of lessened fitness for his heavy responsibility than as sin; and there is as much kindness as condemnation in saying to the wearied veteran, who has stood at his post so long and has taken up arms once more, ‘You have done enough. You are not what you were. Other hands must hold the leader’s staff. Enter into rest.’
Note that Moses was condemned for doing what Jesus always did, asserting his power to work miracles. What was unbelief and a sinful obtrusion of himself in God’s place when the great lawgiver did it, was right and endorsed by God when the Carpenter of Nazareth did it. Why the difference? A greater than Moses is here, when He says to us, ‘What will ye that I should do unto you?’
The name of Meribah-Kadesh is given to suggest the parallel and difference with the other miraculous flow of water. The two incidents are thus brought into connection, and yet individualised. ‘Meribah,’ which means ‘strife,’ brands the murmuring as sinful antagonism to God: ‘Kadesh,’ which means ‘holy,’ brings both the miracle and the sentence under the common category of acts by which God manifested His holiness to the new generation; and so the double name is a reminder of sin that they may be humble, and of mingled mercy and judgment that they may ‘trust and obey.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Death of Miriam. Murmuring at Meribah. Death of Aaron
Death of Miriam. Murmuring at Meribah. Death of Aaron
1. Miriam dies while the people are at Kadesh (see on Num_13:21, Num_13:26). The first month is the first month of the fortieth year. As the people came to Kadesh in the second year (see Num_13:26), they must have remained in the vicinity of Kadesh during the interval, or what is recorded here is a second arrival at the same place: cp. Deu_2:14.
Read full note →
2-13. Murmuring at Meribah.
3. When our brethren died] This probably refers to the deaths following the rebellions of Korah and of Dathan and Abiram (Numbers 16). It implies that these occurrences were recent.
6. Fell upon their faces] see on Num_16:4.
8. The rod] Seeing he took the rod from before the Lord (Num_20:9) it has been thought that Aaron's rod is meant: cp. Num_17:10. But it was more probably Moses' staff which was associated with former dangers and deliverances: see Exo_4:17; Exo_7:17; Exo_14:16; Exo_17:5, Exo_17:9.
12. Ye believed me not] The root of Moses' sin was unbelief. He doubted the power of God, or His willingness to bear longer with these rebels (Num_20:10), and instead of speaking to the rock, as he was commanded to do, he struck it twice: cp. Psa_106:33. The punishment was severe, but want of faith on the part of the leaders could not be overlooked or unpunished, because the people had seen it, and might be led away by the evil example: see on Num_12:14. To sanctify me] God is always holy and His essential holiness cannot be increased. But the obedience and praise of His people cause His holiness and grace to be more widely known and acknowledged. Similarly God is said to be 'magnified,' as in Luk_1:46 : cp. the petition 'Hallowed be Thy name.'
13. Meribah] 'strife.' In Num_27:14; Deu_32:51 it is called Meribah of Kadesh to distinguish it from the Meribah of Exo_17:7 (see note there).
14-21. The people prepare for the last stage of the journey to Canaan. The direct route to the N. is blocked by the Canaanites (Num_21:1). On the E. are the Edomites who are the kindred of the Israelites, being descended from Esau the brother of Jacob. Moses accordingly sends messengers to the king of Edom asking a passage through his country to the E. side of Canaan, but the request is refused.
14. Thy brother] see above, and cp. Deu_23:7; Gen_25:30; Gen_36:8, Gen_36:9. The unnatural hostility of the Edomites on another occasion is the subject of the book of Obadiah (see Num_20:10-12); cp. also Amo_1:11.
16. Sent an angel] see Exo_3:2; Exo_14:19.
17. The king's high way] Edom lay on the direct route connecting Egypt with Babylonia. The king's way here, however, is not a proper name, but signifies the most direct route. They promised not to trespass or injure the country in passing through it.
22-29. Death of Aaron. Turning southward so as to go round the country of the Edomites by way of the N. end of the Gulf of Akaba (see Num_21:4), the Israelites reach Mt. Hor. Here Aaron dies and is buried. Mt. Hor is identified by most travellers with a precipitous mountain nearly 5,000 ft. high, forming the principal elevation in the range of Mt. Seir. The wonderful rock city of Petra (or Sela), the capital of Edom, lay at its eastern base. A small mosque on the summit now marks the traditional site of Aaron's burial-place.
24. Gathered unto his people] This may suggest the continuance of life after death along with those who have gone before: see Gen_15:15. Ye rebelled] The same word is applied to Moses and Aaron as Moses had applied to the people at Meribah (Num_20:10). The leaders, as well as the people with whom they were impatient, were 'rebels.'
26. This signifies the succession of Eleazar to the priesthood. The ceremony of putting on the sacred robes was an important part of the consecration of the high priest. See Lev_8:7-9; Exo_29:29, and cp. the action of Elijah, 1Ki_19:19; 2Ki_2:13-15;
28. Moses also died on the top of a mountain: see Deu_34:1. Aaron died on the first day of the fifth month in the fortieth year of the exodus at the age of 143: see Num_33:38, Num_33:39.
29. The death of Aaron removed the second greatest figure from among the Israelites, and their first high priest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the human priesthood, which is imperfect by reason of its being constantly interrupted by death, with the 'unchanging priesthood' of Him 'who ever liveth to make intercession' for His people: see Heb_7:23-28.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain first month
first month
i.e. April.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain 10. At Kadesh in the Fortieth Year: Murmuring and…
10. At Kadesh in the Fortieth Year: Murmuring and Conquest
CHAPTER 20
Read full note →
1. The death of Miriam (Num 20:1)
2. The murmuring of the people (Num 20:2-5)
3. The divine instruction (Num 20:6-8)
4. Moses’ and Aaron’s failure (Num 20:9-13)
5. Edom’s refusal (Num 20:14-22)
6. The death of Aaron (Num 20:23-29)
Between the nineteenth and twentieth chapter lies the unrecorded period of almost 38 years, the wandering of the children of Israel in the wilderness. In chapter 33 we find their different camps mentioned. In verse 38 of that chapter we read, “And Aaron the priest went up into the mount Hor at the commandment of the Lord, and died there, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the first day of the fifth month.” The death of Aaron is recorded in the twentieth chapter. It was therefore about 37 years and six months when the spies had been sent out and their arrival in the desert of Zin. The critics have made this unrecorded period the occasion of attack upon the Mosaic authorship of this book. They suppose that the last historian who wrote on the Pentateuch left out a great deal of the history of the forty years wanderings. There was nothing to record but the scenes of death and sorrow; the entire theocratic covenant was suspended, and therefore theocratic history has no occurrence to record. It is even so now during the present age, during which Israel is set aside and wanders among the nations of the world.
During all these years of wandering in the wilderness circumcision was not carried out (Jos 5:2-5). What else happened during this unrecorded period in the wilderness may be learned from a number of passages. “But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they walked not in My statutes, and they despised My judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them; and My sabbaths they greatly polluted. Then I said, I would pour out My fury upon them in the wilderness to consume them” (Eze 20:13, etc.), “Have ye not offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves” (Amo 5:25-26). “Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan (worship of Saturn) figures which you made to worship them” (Act 7:42-43). They continued in stubbornness and rebellion and became idolators. But oh! the mercy of God! He continued to feed them and gave them water. “These forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, thou hast lacked nothing” (Deu 2:7). “And I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot” (Deu 19:5). What marvellous compassion! And thus He still deals in mercy with His wayward wandering people. (Psalm 90, standing at the beginning of the fourth section of the book of Psalms (Numbers) was written by Moses, no doubt, when he saw them dying.)
This chapter, which brings us to the last year of their journey, begins with death and ends with death. In the middle we find the record of the failure of Moses and Aaron.
Miriam is the first to die, and her brother Aaron followed her four months later. Hundreds of thousands had passed away; their carcasses fell in the wilderness. And the new generation which has come up also murmured like their fathers and brethren. Such is the heart of man! “Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord!” The Lord commanded Moses to take the rod and speak to the rock, and He promised that the rock should give water. No word of displeasure came from the lips of the gracious Lord, who had compassion with His people. Moses took the rod from before the Lord as He had commanded him. But he also took the rod in his hand with which he had smitten the rock, according to the Lord’s command in Exo 17:5-6. But the words Moses spoke were far from being gracious. “Hear now ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?” God had not called His people rebels. And Moses’ words are far from meek. He makes it appear as if he could supply the water. “They angered Him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes. Because they provoked his spirit so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips” (Psa 106:32-33). And greater still was his failure when he took his rod and not the blossoming rod of Aaron and smote the rock twice. The first smiting of the rock in Exodus 17 with Moses’ rod, the rod of judgment is the type of the death of Christ. This should not be repeated; one smiting was enough just as the death of Christ once for all has opened the floodgates of divine grace. Aaron’s rod, the type of Christ in resurrection, was sufficient, and but the word spoken would bring forth the water. But the anger of Moses marred this scene. He completely lost sight of the gracious Lord and misrepresented Him by his action. “Moses failed, departed from the rich grace of God, fell back on judgment, and judgment accordingly dealt with him.” It was a grievous sin, and on account of it he was not fit to lead Israel into the land. And Aaron, equally weak in faith, shared Moses’ fate. Edom then bars the way for the hosts of Israel and would not let them pass through their land. And Aaron dies on Mount Hor, after Moses had, in obedience to the Lord, removed his priestly garments and put them upon Eleazar.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Murmuring of the People At Kadesh
The Murmuring of the People At Kadesh
v. 1. Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the Desert of Zin, on the northern border of the Wilderness of Paran, in the first month of the fortieth year of the wilderness journey, Cf v. 29 with Num 33:38; and the people abode in Kadesh, in or near the place where they had camped some thirty-eight years before, Num 13:26. The older generation had in the mean time died, being overthrown in the wilderness for their unbelief, 1Co 10:5. And Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Moses and Aaron, and the most prominent among all the women of the host, died there, and was buried there.
Read full note →
v. 2. And there was no water for the congregation; and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, in a dissatisfied mob, just as their fathers had done before them.
v. 3. And the people chode with Moses and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren, all those that had gradually been taken away during the stay in the wilderness, died before the Lord!
v. 4. And why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness that we and our cattle should die there? It is the same unreasonable grumbling, the same exaggeration of unbelief which had characterized the actions of the people more than a generation before.
v. 5. And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, which the memory of their childhood now painted before their eyes in glowing colors, to bring us in unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, that is, where grain can grow, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink. They missed all the delights of field and orchard and vineyard, and the entire situation filled them with disgust.
v. 6. And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly, where they had heard the bitter complaint, unto the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation; and they fell upon their faces, in helpless surrender and in pleading supplications And the glory of the Lord appeared unto them, in majestic contrast to their abject perplexity. Christians should also keep in mind at all times that it is nothing but God’s goodness and mercy which still takes care of them, in spite of all their dissatisfaction and their many faults.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 the wilderness of Zin
the wilderness of Zin
The word "Zin" here is the Hebrew name of the wilderness. (See: Copy or Borrow Words)
Read full note →
the first month
This is the first month of the Hebrew calendar. It marks when God rescued the Israelites from the Egyptians. The first month is during the last part of March and the first part of April on the Western calendar. (See: Hebrew Months)
was buried
This can be stated in active form. AT: "they buried her" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
people group
Israel
desert
Kadesh
Miriam
die
bury
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 20:1The number of years since leaving Egypt is not…
20:1The number of years since leaving Egypt is not specified, but Aaron’s death (20:22-29) took place in Israel’s fortieth year in the wilderness (33:36-39). • Miriam died: All in her generation shared this fate (14:26-30), including Moses and Aaron (20:2-13, 22-29).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.