THE LONG HALT AT KADESH
Sin, Death and Rebellion
The waters of Meribah; the ‘sin’ of Mosheh (Bemidbar 20)
At Meribah, a pastoral centre of the desert of Zin in the neighbourhood of Kadesh, the shepherds complained bitterly to Mosheh because the wells were dried up. It was always the same refrain. Why did you bring the assembly of YAHWEH into this wilderness, only to let us die there, ourselves and our cattle? Why did you lead us out of Egypt only to bring us to this wretched place?’ YAHWEH, to whom Mosheh turned for help and protection, ordered him to take his staff, call the assembly together and in their presence, after ordering the rock to give water, to strike it with the staff and water would flow out. Mosheh therefore assembled the shepherds to reprimand them: ‘Listen now, you rebels. Shall we make water gush from this rock for you?’ And Mosheh raised his hand and struck the rock twice with the staff; water gushed in abundance; and the community drank and their cattle too. So far the elements of the story hang together quite normally, though they are in the epic form in which the whole narrative is couched.
The story continues: Then YAHWEH said to Mosheh and Aaron, ‘Because you did not believe that I could proclaim my righteousness in the eyes of the sons of Yisrael, you shall not lead this assembly into the land I am giving them’. In other words, the two brothers were informed that they would not enter the Promised land; YAHWEH warned them that they would die in the wilderness. Was this because Mosheh had struck the rock twice instead of once?
For a long time it was thought this twofold blow upon the rock showed a lack of faith on the part of Mosheh. A careful reading of the episode shows that Mosheh obeyed without any hesitation at all, perhaps even with ill-tempered haste. A verse in the psalms (Tehillim (Psalms) 106:32-3) is illuminating on this point:
They enraged him at the waters of Meribah; as a result things went wrong for Mosheh, since they had embittered his spirit and he spoke without stopping to think.
And yet in several chapters of the Scriptures when the water of Meribah are mentioned we find YAHWEH reproaching Mosheh severely: ‘You [that is, Mosheh and Aaron] disobeyed MY order at the waters of Meribah’ (Bemidbar. 20:24); ‘You broke faith with ME... at Meribathkadesh’ (Devarim 32:51). And here is the real meaning of the punishment: ‘Because you did not believe that I could proclaim my holiness in the eyes of the sons of Yisrael, you shall not lead this assembly into the land I am giving them’. Thus for the ‘sin’ committed at the waters of Meribah the Yisraelites were condemned to wander for forty years in the desert. The whole generation of Yisraelites born in Egypt were to die in the peninsula; only those among them who were born on the steppes of Sinai were to have the joy of entering Canaan at a later date. Mosheh himself never entered the Promised land; he was only allowed to gaze on it from afar before breathing his last. It was a terrible punishment as far as Mosheh was concerned and one which seems out of proportion with the sin.
An attempted explanation of Mosheh’ sin; you put not your faith in YAHWEH your ABBA
In reality Mosheh’ sin was the abandonment of the plan of a direct campaign against Canaan from the south. At the first reaction of the nomads of the Negeb, unwilling to let the Yisraelite invaders through, the majority of the latter gave way. Mosheh was not energetic enough in taking his troops in hand; he did not dare return to the offensive. By re-reading Chapter 15 of Bemidbar and the beginning of Chapter 20, and especially, by referring to the far more explicit passage of Devarim (1:29-32) we find a satisfactory explanation of the whole situation; the ‘sin’ of Mosheh, formerly regarded as mysterious, now appears as an obvious historical fact.
Before the battle YAHWEH assured HIS people of the assistance that HE would give them during it when they came to grips with the peoples of the south of the future Palestine. ‘Do not take fright, do not be afraid of them. YAHWEH your ABBA goes in front of you and will be fighting on your side.’
After the too hasty retreat of the Yisraelites YAHWEH’s reproaches are easy enough to understand: ‘But for all this, you put not your faith in YAHWEH your ABBA.’ That was the sin of Mosheh.
And the punishment was well deserved: ‘You shall not enter the land where I swore most solemnly, to settle you.’ And Mosheh too: ‘You shall not lead this assembly into the land I am giving them.’ We are now in a position to understand this punishment better; it is no question of punishing a prophet who struck the rock twice, but of punishing the envoy who had weakened in his duty as a leader of men as a result of an obvious lack of faith.
Two men were excepted from the general punishment by YAHWEH: Joshua, who, as we have already seen, spoke out vehemently against those defeatists who were unwilling to fight against the Canaanites; and Caleb, son of Jephunneh, of whom YAHWEH said ‘because he has obeyed ME perfectly, I will bring him into the land he has entered. ‘
Some Yisraelite clans, we can be fairly certain -Kenites, Kenizzites under Caleb’s leadership, Jerahmeelites -took advantage of these first encounters with the Canaanites to push on as far as Hormah where they settled. A little later these groups gradually made their way northwards and pitched their tents in the Negeb. We shall encounter them again when the Yisraelites, having entered Canaan by way of Jericho under Joshua’s leadership, were fighting in the southern provinces. But these successes were exceptional. The general body of Yisraelites fell back on Kadesh. Some scholars hold that the Hebrews who settled in the southern provinces were clans who had remained in Canaan during the whole period when the majority of the people were in Egypt.
It may be wondered why the Scripture is so far from explicit about all this. With some show of reason commentators think that in the circumstances the scribe tried to tone down an episode that was unfavourable to Mosheh’ memory.
Miriam’s death (Bemidbar 20)
Miriam, Mosheh’ ambitious and somewhat dominating sister, died at Kadesh shortly after the defeat on the southern frontier of Canaan. She deserves gratitude for having contrived the clever plan by which she saved the life of her small brother, the future Mosheh. But after that she was instrumental in causing her brother serious embarrassment. She was laid in the grave and no more is heard of her.
The rebellion of Korah the levite (Bemidbar 16)
It is difficult to place this chapter in its right order chronologically. But it does not really matter. What is of importance in the epic is the ill-will of the levites who, eaten up with ambition openly rebelled against the kohen prerogatives granted by Mosheh to Aaron and his family. Although Korah was Mosheh’ cousin he was nonetheless the instigator of a revolt which quickly became ugly. In the presence of Mosheh and Aaron, his high kohen, Korah and his followers put forward their complaints arrogantly: ‘You take too much on yourselves! The whole community and all its members are set apart, and YAHWEH lives among them. Why set yourselves higher than the community of YAHWEH?’ As was explained above, the levites were not kohen; they were merely responsible for service in the Tabernacle, and now they were aspiring to the office of the kohen as well. 4 The whole affair ended in a way characteristic of this type of epic literature: YAHWEH was summoned very properly to give judgment; the earth opened and swallowed up the chief culprits and all Korah’s accomplices were consumed by fire which came down from heaven.
Kadesh formed a long interlude for the tribes on the northern steppes of the Sinai Peninsula. They were there for about thirty-eight years if we accept without too many reservations the figure of ‘forty years in the wilderness’.
4 In fact the account of Korah’s rebellion combines two overlapping narratives and this makes the passage far from clear. On the one hand we have an account (Yahwistic tradition) of the political rebellion of Dathan, Abiram and On, all of the tribe of Reuben; on the other, there is an account (Kohen tradition) of the set apart rivalry between branches of the tribe descended from Levi -the Kohathites (Korah and his supporters) and the Aaronites (Aaron and his two survIving sons).
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