and said to all the congregation of the Israelites, “The land that we went through as spies is an exceedingly good land.
If the LORD is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey.
Only, do not rebel against the LORD; and do not fear the people of the land, for they are no more than bread for us; their protection is removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.”
But the whole congregation threatened to stone them.
Then the glory of the LORD appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites.
And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?
I will strike them with pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”
13 But Moses said to the LORD, “Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for in your might you brought up this people from among them,
and they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, O LORD, are in the midst of this people; for you, O LORD, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them and you go in front of them, in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.
Now if you kill this people all at one time, then the nations who have heard about you will say,
‘It is because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to give them that he has slaughtered them in the wilderness.’
And now, therefore, let the power of the LORD be great in the way that you promised when you spoke, saying,
BEING THE UNDERDOG
Do you remember the passage . . . where Moses sends the spies into Canaan and they come back and say “We have seen the giants, the sons of Anak; and we were in our own eyes as grasshoppers.” Isn’t that perfect? It brings out the monstrosity of the giants so well, because one thinks of the grasshopper as being not only small, but fragile, light and even flimsy. “Beetles, for example, would not” have done nearly so well.
—from a letter to Arthur Greeves, October 1, 1934
For reflection
Numbers 13:33
‘The LORD is slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love,
forgiving iniquity and transgression,
but by no means clearing the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
to the third and the fourth generation.’
Forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have pardoned this people, from Egypt even until now.”
20 Then the LORD said, “I do forgive, just as you have asked;
nevertheless—as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD—
none of the people who have seen my glory and the signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have tested me these ten times and have not obeyed my voice,
shall see the land that I swore to give to their ancestors; none of those who despised me shall see it.
But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me wholeheartedly, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.
Now, since the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.”[29 (#ulink_96650928-3f62-5dac-a6a6-f41d0fe8cbf6)]
FACE-TO-FACE
SCREWTAPE’S UNHOLY CAUTION:
If ever he consciously directs his prayers “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be,” our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation—this real nakedness of the soul in prayer—you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose. There’s such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!
—from The Screwtape Letters
For reflection
Numbers 14:5–24
26 And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying:
How long shall this wicked congregation complain against me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites, which they complain against me.
Say to them, “As I live,” says the LORD, “I will do to you the very things I heard you say:
your dead bodies shall fall in this very wilderness; and of all your number, included in the census, from twenty years old and upward, who have complained against me,
not one of you shall come into the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
But your little ones, who you said would become booty, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have despised.
But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness.
And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.
According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.”
I the LORD have spoken; surely I will do thus to all this wicked congregation gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die.
36 And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation complain against him by bringing a bad report about the land—
the men who brought an unfavorable report about the land died by a plague before the LORD.
But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh alone remained alive, of those men who went to spy out the land.
