I confess, this week had had me cringing, flinching, procrastinating... But now it's time to take a deap breath and tackle it head on.
The next mention of 'desert' after the dismal affair at Kadesh is Numbers 15:32:
While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day.
We are not given an itemized description of what happened whilst the Israelites wandered about in the desert, shut out of the promise until all the complaining generation had died off, but we do get a couple of significant events. The lowly fellow breaking the Sabbath led to catastrophic events, which came to be known as Korah's Rebellion.
The fellow who broke the Sabbath was stoned for his audacity...or absent-mindedness. It was important that the Israelites learn that God was serious about this Sabbath business, but it was also apparent that they weren't used to the boundaries yet. So God gave Moses instructions to have the Israelites create tassels on the corners of their garments...tassels with a blue thread. The idea was to give them a continual visible reminder that they were holy people, with holy expectations, so they wouldn't fall back into old habits and break the covenant.
Sounds simple enough, right?
But the tassels caused problems.
Not going to quote it all here; you can read it in the first part of chapter 16...Korah, some Reubenites, and 250 community leaders came as a group to Moses and said, "You have gone too far!" (16:3)
Taking the whole thing in context...their complaint was triggered by Moses reporting the new requirement to put tassels on the clothing.
That was, apparently, something the men of the assembly could not handle. So they rebelled.
Moses basically told them they would have a meeting before the LORD, who would then demonstrate clearly who had the authority to speak for God, telling the group
"It against the LORD that you and all your followers have banded together. Who is Aaron that you should grumble against him?" (16:11).
Side quest grumble count: 6
Moses summoned the Reubenites who were supporting Korah to the, um, meeting but received the response
"We will not come! Isn't it enough that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the desert? And now you also want to lord it over us? Moreover, you haven't brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey or given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you gouge the eyes out of these men? No, we will not come! (16: 12b - 14).
Adding grumble to grumble...accusation to accusation.
The next morning, as had been determined, all the leaders accusing Moses and Aaron took their censers of incense and appeared in front of the tent of meeting. Moses and Aaron fell facedown before God and interceeded for the people once again, and once again God determined the scope of his judgement...
"Say to the assembly, 'Move away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.' " (16:24)
It no doubt took some time for everyone to pack up their tents and such and move away from these folks; Korah's tent would have been with the Levites, but Dathan and Abiram's tents were in the camp of the Reubenites. Nonetheless, eventually all the Israelites had removed all their belongings and families well away from the tents of the three leaders of the rebellion. Those guys stood at the entrance to their tents with their families...heartbreaking.
Selah a moment to get a good mental picture of what that looked like....these three guys, with their families, watching everyone pack up and move away from them.
Once everyone was clear, Moses made a declaration to the nation. paraphrased as:
"We are going to see if God sent me and told me to do all these things. If nothing happens, and all these folks in front of you go on about their business and die of natural causes at a good old age, then I 'm a fake and God never spoke to me. But if God does something totally new and unexpected...like, say, the ground opens up and swallows them and all that belongs to them and they are all buried alive, then you will know that these men have treated God with contempt."
We pick up the narrative in 16:31:
As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with all their households and all Korah's men and all their posessions. They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them , and they perished and were gone from the community."
Selah a moment and get a mental picture of THAT.
At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, shouting, 'The earth is going to swallow us, too!' (16:34)
Are you imagining the chaos and confusion and terror? Do you see the choking dust? Are you hearing the screams of those that perished and those who thought they would be next? And yet in the midst of all this, one other stroke of judgement fell...
And fire came out from the LORD and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense. (16:35)
Nobody had moved away from them; they were still presumably standing in front of the Tent of Meeting with their censers.
The ashes of those that died and the coals in the censers were scattered, but God declared their censers holy, and they were collected to be hammered out as an overlay for the altar, reminding the Israelites that God had chosen Aaron and his descendants to minister to him. Every time the sacrifices were made, the people would see the bronze from the censers of the men who paid for their rebellion with their lives.
You would think this would be the end of the issue, with God's chain of command clearly verified before the people.
Nope.
The next day the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron, "You have killed the LORD's people," they said. (16:41)
Grumble number seven. On the VERY NEXT DAY.
Verse 42 tells us that the assembly gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron and turned toward the Tent of Meeting.
The intercession the day before had pivoted on the mercy of God to not destroy the whole nation because a small percentage had rebelled. But on that day, it was the entire nation rising up against them, despite the clear signs that God was working through them alone.
This time, Moses and Aaron fell facedown before God's declaration that he would destroy the nation...and the plague started. Some kind of virulent disease broke out and people began dropping like flies (Cholera? Even that takes a few days. Whatever this was, it was lethal and it was spreading fast). Moses told Aaron to put incense in his censer and make atonement for the people. He did so as quickly as he could, and ran into the the midst of the assembly and made atonement, with his incense and his prayers.
He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague stopped. (16:48)
Numbers 16:49 tells us that Fourteen thousand seven hundred people died in the time it took Aaron to get the coals in his censer and find the leading edge of the plague. Add to that the folks who had died on the previous day and we are pushing 15,000 people who died because they decided being required to put tassels on their clothes was going too far.
Chapter 17 relates the final sign God gave to tell the people that Moses and Aaron were acting on His authority...Aaron's staff budded , blossomed and produced almonds. The staff was put in front of the Testimony, as a sign, again, to remind people not to grumble.
We have more instructions about offerings and such; the instructions for the water of cleansing, which was to contain the ashes of a perfect red heifer, but no details on their movements through the rest of chapter 19.
This was clearly the biggest challenge to Moses and Aaron to date. It is, perhaps, understandable if you realize that the Israelites really didn't have a concept of who God was or what his heart was towards his people. They may very well have assumed it was Moses who brought them to the edge of the Promise, only to wave it in front of them and then deny them access to it. If they really didn't believe God was with them, if they concocted some kind of narrative that explained everything away without God's intervention, they totally missed the lessons. They did, as Moses stated, treat God with contempt. Because they didn't really believe.
It was a willful self-deception. And they paid the price for it.
Self-deception is not excused. It incurs penalties. It is one of the things that angers God.
It's also one of humanity's favorite responsibility dodges...we refuse to see, refuse to believe, allow ourselves to be convinced...all to avoid acknowledging our sin. It makes us feel better but...it doesn't work. All it does is blind us to the truth...to the point that God can be moving right in front of us in ways we can't ignore ( do you suppose those screams haunted dreams for decades?) but we will not see what is really happening.
I need a 'tassel' in my life, to remind myself daily that I am not my own, I am bought with a price...and I am to honor God at all times. Because it's way too easy to fall into doing what makes sense to me. The 'tassel' is a reminder that what makes sense to me...isn't necessarily what is sensible before God.
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