The first church I served in El Paso was a new congregation that met in a gymnasium. In one of our early board meetings, an accusatory member said, "I believe our pastor is padding the attendance figures to impress the district superintendent. I noticed in our last newsletter that 62 people were recorded present. I counted only 46." I responded, "Since I don't take the attendance on Sunday morning, let's ask the head usher. How many were in the gymnasium?" He said, "46." "And how many were in the nursery & children's church?" He said,"16, sir, for a total of 62." The man who brought the accusation then argued that we don't count children. I simply said, "We count children because children count." In the book of Numbers, children weren't counted (only the male adults), but there were 603,550 potential fighting men plus the Levites. Chapter 2 gives the placing of the tribes. Can you imagine positioning all these people (and their families!), without a sound system and without mail? Talk about herding cats! Chapter 10 gives us one clue. They used the shofar (shown above). During holy days, times of prayer or for national mourning you will often hear the sound of the shofar. It takes the lips of a trumpeter and huge breath to make any sound worth hearing.
This reading gives the picture of the children of Israel moving from desert to desert in the Sinai peninsula. Unfortunately, tracings of the journeys they made show they tended to go around in circles. The time in the Sinai should have been 6 months, but instead took 40 years. Is that the human condition or what? Another part of the human condition is when things aren't going well, people start to "murmur", gripe and blame one another (the story of chapters 11-12). The dialogue between Moses and God in 11:10-23 is both humorous and very practical. People were getting tired of their every day meal of manna. They wanted meat like they had in Eqypt. God responds a whole lot like my mom used to respond to food complaints. "I'll send you meat alright and you will eat every bite. And I hope it makes you sick as a dog"(Peggy Cotton version of the Hebrew text). One of the real tenets of the Old Testament law is that God detests a complaining spirit and tends to punish people who are that way: ground swallows them (see Numbers 16), fire comes from heaven, plagues, etc. Miriam and Aaron join in the complaining in chapter 12 over Moses taking a Cushite (Egyptian) wife. He did it without their blessing, but God is not amused, turning Miriam leprous. But they are at the edge of Canaan now. Isn't it interesting how, at the edge of achieving what you dream, there are conflicts - last ditch efforts of the devil to collapse the whole thing? It's true at work, in families, and occasionally even in churches.
Moses sends spies to scope out the land of Canaan before entering. Their report is found in chapter 13:26-33 and 14:1-45 describes the people's reaction. It is a wonderful essay on faith and leadership. They report that the land is very fertile and lush, but that it is inhabited by fortified cities and "sons of Anak." The tradition was that these large individuals (think Goliath)descended from the "Nephilum," described in Genesis 6 (half-human and half-angel). The report is that the Israelite soldiers will be like grasshoppers ("they'll squash us like a bug?!"). Only Caleb and Joshua give a report to go in. The rest of the scouting team (10 in all) call for not going in. The people get wind of the report and begin crying out in fear, "If only we had died in Egypt." God decides to kill the whole lot of them. But Moses talks God out of it. Again, the dialogue between Moses and God is humorous (14:10ff), but the end result is that none of those male adults will be going into the promised land except Joshua and Caleb. What about Moses? Well, you would have to read Numbers 20 for that one.
The concluding part of our reading in Numbers 17 is the vindication of Aaron's leadership through the budding of his rod. From then on, the budding rod is put into the Ark of the Covenant with the Ten Commandments.
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