Numbers 13 (v21-33), One Opportunity to Get It Right

Num. 13-14 bring us to the site of one of Israel’s greatest failures (perhaps second after the rejection of their Messiah).  They have come to Kadesh Barnea.  The twelve spies were sent out.  They returned, confirming that the land was everything God said it would be.  Yet they put the word of man above the promise of God. 

Psalm 95:7b-11 and Hebrews 3-4 have this story as a backdrop.  The Psalmist has a great summary:

Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts,

as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness,

when your fathers tested Me; they tried Me, though they saw My work. 

For forty years I was grieved with that generation, and said,

‘it is a people who go astray in their hearts, and they do not know My ways.'  

So I swore in My wrath, “They shall not enter My rest.”

The places where Israel would stop and camp (i.e. where the cloud and fire came to a halt) were “resting places.”  The ultimate “resting place” for Israel would be when they came to the land flowing with milk and honey.  When they got there, the wilderness journey would end.  This is God’s “rest” that the people who refused to enter at Kadesh Barnes would never enter.  That Hebrew term for “rest” (Heb. menucha) is pregnant with meaning in the OT as well as in Heb. 3-4.  Meditate on these passages.  We will put the translation of menucha in quotes.

·       Ruth 1:9: A husband is a “rest” for his wife.

·       1 Kings 8:56: Solomon blessed the LORD for giving “rest” to His people in his day.  There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised through His servant Moses.

·       Psalm 23:2: He leads me beside “still” waters.

·       Isaiah 11:10 (32:15-20): The Messianic Kingdom is termed a “resting place.”

·       Isa. 28:12; Micah 2:10: Israel sought “rest” in the lies of false prophets.  Micah 2:10 also declared to Israel that the words and lies of the false prophets would not be their “resting place”.

·       Jer. 45:3: Jeremiah told his secretary Baruch, You said you found no ‘rest’; the LORD will give you your life as a prize.

In the case of Heb. 3-4, the writer is addressing Jewish believers who were considering trying to get relief from persecution by going back to temple worship.  Perhaps, they thought, their Jewish persecutors would give them rest.  Instead the Holy Spirit warned them, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion (Heb. 3:15).  This would be an act of unbelief, as it was in Kadesh Barnea (3:18-19).  Then He encouraged them: Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest (4:11).  Num. 13-14 are important for us today.

Photos near Hebron, the area of the Valley of Eshkol.