Feb. 20 Daily Question

By your reading of the chapters in Numbers, what would you say it is that leads to the wilderness generation’s condemnation? What is it that leads to Moses’? Given that the compilers of the Hebrew Bible could have ended the core unit of the OT in any place—e.g. after the conquest of the Land—why is it, do you think, that they closed the Pentateuch (i.e. the first unit of the Bible that is comprised of the first five books) with the death of Moses? How might the closing passage of Deuteronomy 34 guide our reading of all that takes place in the book of Joshua? What does the text really mean to say about the events of his generation?

Stated simply, the unwillingness of Israel to be patient for the lord to fulfill his promises and their lack of faith and trust in the Lord led to their condemnation. The exodus of Israel out of Egypt was riddled with constant complaining and constant references about the ifs, and about all of the hardships they would not be facing, had the lord not brought them out of Egypt. It was by the Lord’s mercy that in the first place God made a promise to Abraham of land, progeny and blessing, but was by no means something that the Lord was obligated to do. “Despite all the signs that [the Lord] performed in their midst,” out of nothing but to deliver his creation to a promised land where they could worship him and fulfill the human longing, they whined before Him and rejected the lord. While the lack of faith, trust and patience was by no means present to the same degree with Moses, what led to his condemnation was his inability to work to obtain the faith of Israel for God and his deliverance. Despite this however, in the context of the formation of the Pentateuch, it is evident that Moses is a significant figure whose death symbolizes a transition. It was made very clear in the Bible that there never again arose “in Israel a prophet like Moses-whom the Lord singled out, face to face,” meaning that following Moses, the form in which God would find Israel to be worthy of the promises of Abraham would be fundamentally different. It is worth distinguishing all of these books as a singular narrative because they share the common theme of God electing the righteous out of created people do do his work as prophets. Post-Moses it is about how the select few of the rest of Israel who died continue to fulfill God’s promise and follow his laws. Despite all of this, however, there are many similarities. “Just as Moses led a miraculous crossing of the parted waters of the Red Sea,” Joshua undergoes a similar experience, and to an extent it can be said that there is another exodus. The text comes to show us, especially after Moses, that the pattern of the generation of Joshua is to fall short of the ideals of God’s covenant. They followed other Gods, worshiped and bowed down to them, and did not change their ways, and as a result would come to incur a different side of God that is seen in the Pentateuch.