I suppose I can understand the Israelites becoming sick of Manna, but when they pulled their whiny "We want meat" to Moses who in return says to the Lord, "For they are crying to me, 'Give us meat for our food.' I cannot carry all this people by myself, for the are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that i need no longer face this distress." (Ch 11, v14-15)
Moses must have really been frustrated at that point to ask for death instead of dealing with these people any longer! Of course, the Lord didn't punish Moses for that, instead he responded, "To the people, however, you shall say: Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, when you shall have meat to eat. For in the hearing of the Lord you have cried, 'Would that we had meat for food! Oh, how well off we were in Egypt!' Therefore the Lord will give you meat for food, and you will eat it, not for one day, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty days, but for a whole month - until it comes out of your very nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. For you have spurned the Lord who is in your midst, and in his presence you have wailed, 'Why did we ever leave Egypt?' " (Ch 11, v 18-20)
I love it. Give them what they want until they can't stand it anymore. What parent would think that a bad discipline strategy! Did it work? Ha! Of course not. So when in Chapter 14 they once again turned whiny and wished to return to Egypt (even going so far as to want to appoint another leader), God threatened to destroy them and essentially to start again with a new nation presumably from Moses and Aaron's families.
Moses begged for their lives citing essentially "What will the Egyptians say?". I'll admit I had a difficult time with that. Trying to reason with an all-knowing deity just seems odd to me. But...not going there right now. Too sicky-icky feeling.
God's punishment? "How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the Israelites against me. Tell them: By my life, says the Lord, I will do to you just what I have heard you say. Here in the desert shall your dead bodies fall. Of all your men of twenty years or more, registered in the census, who grumbled against me, not one shall enter the land where I solemnly swore to settle you, except Caleb, son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, son of Nun."
Now I knew the Israelites wandered for 40 years before entering the land of milk and honey as a punishment for their grumbling, but I didn't realize that it was made known to them that they were to wander until the last of the adult grumblers kicked the proverbial bucket. Of course this didn't mean that their whining stopped. I don't think it will for the rest of the Old Testament. What a patient God! If only I could be so patient with my children!
There's lots more in the Book of Numbers that I haven't touched on. The censuses that I was so excited about weren't that interesting, but then I suppose to people that hear me ramble on about my family tree feel the same way. Some very interesting information in those censuses though to include the number of adult men (of a viable military age). It was very interesting to see how they were broken down and laid out, assigning jobs and areas to camp and who answers in what order when the alarm is raised. Our God is quite a military leader there! Even the treatment of captives, division of "booty" (I laughed at that one), purification after combat, etc. Now that was very interesting!
The last thing I'll mention, because I found it very interesting as well as it was also one of the last thing mentioned in Numbers, was about witnesses. I was intrigued that witnesses must give evidence for a murdered to be executed and that there needed to be more than one witness to put a person to death for murder. That bit did surprise me. What if the murder happened out of sight of anyone? Still, it's always interesting looking back at such laws.
I'll do my best to get the next post ready for tomorrow's reading assignment. For now, it's time to rest and kick these cooties!
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