Thoughts on Numbers 32

Today’s reading: Numbers 32; 1 John 3

The interaction we see in Numbers 32 this morning is really interesting to me because we see an unexpected humility from the Israelites.

We are used to seeing the Israelites turn from God over and over again, and frankly, so is Moses. He has been leading Israel for over 40 years, and during that time he has seen them rebel against God and His provision, he has had to intercede for them before the Lord multiple times when God was going to wipe them out, and he has seen them killed by fire, plague, and snakebite as punishment for their rebellion. It has not been an easy group to lead, and if there has been one consistent characteristic that has defined the people, it has been fickleness toward the Lord.

So when the Reubenites, Gadites, and half of the Manassites come to Moses and tell him they don’t want to go into the promised land and just want to settle where they are, Moses’ harsh reaction makes a lot of sense. Forty years ago the people decided they didn’t want to enter the land and they were punished with forty years wandering in the wilderness as a result! This is why Moses pulls no punches in how he responds to them saying, “And behold, you have risen in your fathers’ place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the Lord against Israel!”

Moses slams these men, publicly and fiercely condemning their motives and their actions, and their response is really telling to me.

To begin with, I could be wrong on this, but it seems like they didn’t respond right away. The way it specifies, after Moses’ rant, “Then they came near to him and said…” makes it seem like this is a separate conversation from their original request, otherwise why would they need to come near? If I’m right about this then it means that they took the time to step back and consider what Moses said. Now, I don’t think they actually had the motives Moses attributed to them (we’ll talk about that next), but there was more in Moses’ rant than condemnation of their supposed motivation; there were also practical concerns about what them staying where they were would do to the morale of the rest of the people. Rather than come back and argue with Moses about why they wanted to do it, despite him having used some super inflammatory language about them, they come back to Moses and address his concerns, offering to build folds for their sheep and then send their tribal armies over with the rest of the people until they are settled in the land.

I think this also says something about their original motives. Moses assumed these tribes were rebelling because he has seen Israel rebel over and over, but I think these tribes legitimately looked around, saw it was a good and rich land for livestock, and since the rest of Israel would be on the other side of the Jordan, it would still be contiguous land with the rest of the nation. So I think it was with full integrity of heart, not in rebellion against God, that they asked to settle in the land of the Amorites, and that they had potentially not considered the morale impact of their armies not going with the rest of the army to take Canaan. That’s why, when Moses raises this as a concern, they are willing to go, but still want to keep the land they originally asked for. If they were only asking for that land to get out of having to go fight, why would they settle for getting it and still having to fight? If it was as Moses assumed, they would have cut bait and just gone in with everyone else to get their possession in Canaan and not across the Jordan from the rest of Israel.

What we (and evidently Moses) need to realize is that we are dealing with a different Israel now. The reason Israel is back at the Jordan river ready to cross into the promised land is that all the rebellious generation have died. All those rebellions we have been reading about were perpetrated by the older generation and all the punishments we have been reading about were targeted at the same, just as God said, every one of them would die in the wilderness and He would take their children into the land instead. The group we are dealing with now are those who were children and teenagers when God came to rescue them from Egypt, and they have not followed their parents in turning away from the Lord. In fact, while they aren’t perfect, this generation, under the leadership of first Moses, then Joshua, and finally the elders who outlive Joshua, stay faithful to the Lord. It is not until after that that we get into the period of the judges when everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes.

I think that is part of the reason this story is included, to clue us into the fact that we are dealing with a different kind of Israel now than we have been dealing with up to this point, and it is this new generation of faithful Israelites who are going to enter the land and take possession of the Lord’s promise.

I also think though that there is a good lesson in here for us in how the people respond to Moses’ verbal assault. If this was really done with integrity (and I think the evidence points to that it was), then they had every right to be angry with Moses for the public character assassination and to fight back, but they don’t. For whatever wrong assumptions Moses was making about them, he had reasonable concerns mixed in as well. Rather than getting caught up in the heated, emotional exchange, these men were willing to take a deeply humble step back, consider Moses’ legitimate concerns, and come back, without even trying to defend themselves or their intentions, and offer a plan that could satisfy both of their concerns.

I would say there is also a lesson in this from how Moses responds as well, but we’ll have to leave that for a different day. This morning, I’m struck and convicted by the humility these men exhibit, and I want to Lord to build that same kind of humility in me.