Numbers 14

This passage in Numbers finds Israel, having departed from Mount Sinai, at the threshold of Canaan. In Numbers 13 the twelve spies returned after surveying the land for forty days, and ten of them brought an evil report of it. Chapter 14 records how the people responded to this report and what followed.

Outline

• Verses 1–4: The congregation weeps through the night, murmurs against Moses and Aaron, and proposes appointing a captain to lead them back to Egypt.
• Verses 5–10: Moses and Aaron fall on their faces. Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes and urge the people not to fear, for the land is exceedingly good; the congregation responds by seeking to stone them. At that moment the glory of the LORD appears at the tabernacle of the congregation.
• Verses 11–12: The LORD declares that He will strike the people with pestilence and make of Moses a great nation.
• Verses 13–19: Moses argues that the nations would then doubt the LORD's power, and he asks Him to pardon the people according to His longsuffering and great mercy.
• Verses 20–25: The LORD pardons the people but declares that those who have tempted Him ten times will not see the land He swore to give. Caleb is the exception, and the people are commanded to turn into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.
• Verses 26–35: All who were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, and who murmured will die in the wilderness, while the little ones who they said would become a prey will enter the land. Counting each of the forty days of the search as a year, the people will spend forty years in the wilderness.
• Verses 36–38: The spies who brought the evil report of the land die by plague; only Joshua and Caleb survive.
• Verses 39–45: Belatedly, the people go up to the top of the mountain. Moses warns them against it, and neither the ark of the covenant nor Moses departs from the camp. The people are defeated by the Amalekites and the Canaanites and driven back as far as Hormah.

Key Verses

• Numbers 14:9: "Neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us." This verse displays the faith of Joshua and Caleb, who saw the same land as the ten spies yet reached a different judgment.
• Numbers 14:18: "The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy." Here Moses grounds his prayer in the declaration of God's character in Exodus 34:6.
• Numbers 14:24: "But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully." This verse identifies the one who stood as an exception within the murmuring generation.

People and Places

• Moses and Aaron: The objects of the people's murmuring; Moses intercedes on the people's behalf.
• Joshua: The son of Nun and one of the spies.
• Caleb: The son of Jephunneh and one of the spies.
• The Amalekites and Canaanites: The peoples who dwelt in the hill country and valleys into which Israel attempted to go up.
• Egypt: The place to which the people proposed to return.
• The Red Sea: Named as the way by which the people were to turn back into the wilderness.
• Hormah: The place to which defeated Israel was driven, believed to have been located in the southern part of Canaan.
• The tabernacle of the congregation (see Tabernacle) and the ark of the covenant: The glory of the LORD appeared at the tabernacle, and the ark did not leave the camp during the presumptuous attack.

Points for Reflection

• Moses' intercession and the will of God: In this scene, God's declared intention to destroy the people appears to change after Moses' prayer. The Reformed tradition tends to presuppose God's immutability and to explain prayer as a means God has ordained. Wesleyan and Arminian theology tend to place greater emphasis on God genuinely responding to prayer and acting accordingly. Together with Moses' intercession at the time of the golden calf incident, this passage is read as a representative text on intercessory prayer.
• "Each day for a year" (verse 34): In its context, this phrase sets the length of the punishment. Historicist interpreters of prophecy, such as the Seventh-day Adventist Church, use this verse together with Ezekiel 4:6 as a basis for reckoning prophetic days as years. Many denominations do not regard this verse as a general principle of prophetic interpretation.
• "Ten times" (verse 22): Jewish rabbinic tradition is said to enumerate ten specific trials in the wilderness. The text itself provides no list, and some interpreters read the phrase as meaning "repeatedly."
• Verse 28 and "speech": Some sermons use "as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you" as a general lesson about the power of words. Others point out that, in context, the verse is a sentence of judgment upon the people's murmuring.
• Connections to the New Testament: Hebrews 3–4 holds up the wilderness generation, which failed to enter into rest because of unbelief, as a warning (quoting Psalm 95). 1 Corinthians 10:11–12 likewise cites the murmuring in the wilderness as an example.

In the Korean Church

This chapter is frequently used in sermons and Sunday school lessons that contrast the negative report of the ten spies with the faith of Joshua and Caleb. "They are bread for us" is often quoted when speaking of faith that overcomes fear. The forty years in the wilderness brought on by murmuring is commonly treated as a warning against complaining and unbelief.