Will Vaus

Numbers 20 is an eventful chapter. Miriam dies in Kadesh and is buried there, but we read nothing of the Israelite reaction to this. Then the Israelites complain about not having water and not having the food they like or anything to support their livestock. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces before the Lord and the glory of the Lord appears to them. I wonder: if we fell on our faces before the Lord more often, would his glory also appear to us? The Lord tells Moses to take the staff (presumably Aaron’s budded staff from the Holy of Holies) and command the rock to yield water. Instead, Moses strikes the rock twice. Water does come out, perhaps because the Lord wants to meet the need of the people despite Moses’ disobedience. The Lord immediately tells Moses that he will not enter the promised land because “you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites”. Next, Moses sends messengers to the King of Edom (the descendants of Esau...

In Numbers 12, we see Moses’ own brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, speaking against him because he has taken another wife, in addition to Zipporah, a Cushite woman from Ethiopia. Notice, Aaron and Miriam do not state their main complaint, they state another one instead: “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” Apparently, they were jealous of Moses’ position and resentful of it, as well as being unhappy about his new wife, perhaps for racist reasons since her skin, as an Ethiopian, would have been a darker color than their own skin. We read in Numbers 12:3, “Now the man Moses was very humble.” This is curious because Moses does not come across as humble in what we have read of him so far. Perhaps he grew in humility through having to bear such a great burden of leadership. This verse also indicates that at least this part of Numbers was not written by Moses. One cannot claim humility for oneself, even in the third person, a...