Everyone who knows me knows I love a road trip and our dear Israelites are about to take the mother of all road trips. They are leaving Mt. Sinai, and heading out into the great unknown.
Before I go any further I need to ask, does anyone else find Dan to be a very strange Biblical name? I just don't feel as though Dan and Zebulon, and Gad should know each other. Dan, huh?
So they are heading out in order, always in order. A place for everyone and everyone in his place. They go along fine for a while and these poor folks start to get hungry.
I know...."How dare they, right?!" They have coriander seed cakes, which ABSOLUTELY sound divine (truly, no pun intended) to me. But these folks, like most of you weirdo's, they want some meat. MEAT, they not only want, they lust after the meat.
Ever heard the saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Well not in the case. In this case the squeaky wheel gets killed...with fire.
The Lord is so mad at these folks for complaining that he literally burns them up with fire. For real. That will teach them to lust after meat. Right? Wrong. They still continue to lust after meat.
Then the Lord gets sooooo mad that he completely turns all Trunchbull on em (you know, Trunchbull.....from Matilda, read the book if you haven't....fantastic) So, just like the Trunchbull does when she finds out that the boy ate a piece of her cake. She forces him to eat a gigantic one in front of everyone in hopes that he will get so sick he will vomit in front of the whole school. God does that. He does. I know!
He says "They want meat!! They want meat!! Ok they will eat meat until they vomit it and the vomit comes out of their nostrils." He then totally mocks and teases them. He's all "Boo hoo, poor us we were lead out of Egypt.....boo hoo we were slaves and now we are free and we want meat....booo hooo" He ain't even playin...he is angry.
I tried to see it from his point of view. I really did. The closest I could come was thinking about when we took the kids to Disney. There were times when they would be tired and hungry and overstimulated and would get grumpy. If they dared to shed a tear I would totally lose it. "WE ARE AT THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH, I SOLD A KIDNEY TO BRING YOU HERE AND YOU WILL NOT SHED A SINGLE TEAR! YOU WILL HAVE FUN UNTIL YOU VOMIT (OUT OF YOUR NOSE)"
I suppose it was similar. The only difference though is that he didn't really sacrifice anything, did he? I guess the point is, he did this for them and they agreed to go along. So if they have no meat, they should rejoice in no meat.
Then we have a little drama with Aaron and his wife. They get together and gossip about Moses and his wife and they start to totally dis on Moses. And guess who hears? Yep...God. He hears them and calls a meeting and gives Miriam leprosy. Lesson learned.
Next we have a spy mission. Some men folk set out to the Wilderness of Zin and they bring back some grapes, pomegranates and figs....who would want meat at this point?
Guess how long they were gone?..............40 days!
They say that yea the land is great, the food, fantabulous. But the people are GIANTS. Caleb didn't care (little man syndrome) he thought they could take em.
7 comments:
Well, first of all, the reading was thru 13 not 14, but after reading your post, I think it's just a misprint.
Yeah, I think the biggest thing out of all of this I got was Caleb's reaction to the Canaanites. Everyone else was scared of the giants, but Caleb wasn't. Apparently Caleb believed what God said about him and the Israelites....that they are blessed, that He would fight their battles for them, that they were mighty men of God. Caleb chose to see himself the way God saw him. He chose to believe what God said about himself and the Israelites. Question is do you?
Tomorrow is Num.14-17 and Psalm 90. Yes we get to mix it up a little.
Couldn't you very well be misinterpreting arrogance for faith? Why was he the ONLY one who made that choice?
I guess that could be an interpretation....if you wanted to be cynical; and, as you know, many people are cynical when it comes to the Bible, Christianity, and religion. But let's think about this the way we'd think about it now. If you saw giants (and a lot of them) would you or I be so arrogant to think we could defeat them no problem? You have called me arrogant before, and you know that I used to bodybuild; but even at 245 lbs., with my military training, and with all of my friends (of whom I was probably the smallest), I wouldn't go up against an army of giants with anything other than faith (if I were to even have enough faith for that). You have to remember when these ancient peoples fight it's for all the marbles...their families are behind them. This wouldn't be a war fought far from loved ones in a distant land. If they lose there's a great chance their wives and children will be slaughtered and/or enslaved. The giants are in their homeland; they know the terrain, are better supplied, etc. This kind of confidence, I believe, has to come from faith. The kind of faith that Abraham had when he was going to sacrifice Isaac. And although it didn't say in these verses, you'll see in the next chapter that Joshua agreed with Caleb. Even if he didn't, in all the reading we've done so far does it really surprise you that only one of the 12scouts has such tremendous faith after seeing how hard headed the Israelites as a whole have been?
" I wouldn't go up against an army of giants with anything other than faith (if I were to even have enough faith for that)."
So, basically, Jamie is saying he doesn't trust/have faith in God b/c he wouldn't fight giants, even though he's a badass dude who totally COULD fight giants?
It's a little confusing, but it sounds like Jamie might have more skepticism than he lets on...
Oh, Stephen if that were only true......
I think the exodus from Egypt by the Jews is the most interesting part about the Old Testament.
I think the most interesting part about it is the fact that it's entirely bullshit and never happened.
I mean the moment we start looking for sources outside the Bible for this event we come up empty handed.
Now according to Exodus 12:40, the Israelites lived in Egypt for 430 years. OVER FOUR HUNDRED YEARS!!!!!!!!!!
Yet for all this time, there is simply no literary nor archeological evidence outside the Hebrew scriptures that records the amazing travel of our heroes, the Israelites in Egypt.
I found this quote by archeaologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman noted:
[W]e have no clue, not even a single word, about the early Israelites in Egypt: neither in monumental inscriptions on the walls of temples, nor in tomb inscriptions, nor in papyri. Israel is absent - as a possible foe of Egypt, as a friend, or as an enslaved nation. [7]
Jamie, don't you find it amazing that four centuries of settlement left not a single trace????
When we comes to the actual Exodus, things are even worse.
According to the Pentateuch that more than a million people were involved in the Exodus:
Exodus 12:37 (Also Numbers 1:45-46)
The children of Israel traveled from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot who were men, besides children.
So here's the rub:
With six hundred thousand men, besides children and presumably women, we are talking about an Exodus of more than one million people.
We are also told (Joshua 5:6) that this one million plus wandered for forty years in the wilderness in Sinai.
Now surely more than more than a million people wandering around for forty years would have left some traces for archeaologist to find. Something, some sort of historical stamp that we find in THOUSANDS of lost and buried cultures throughout time.
Yet not a single archeological evidence have been found. This is not for want of trying. Between 1967, when Israel captured the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, and 1982, when it was returned in the peace treaty, Israeli archaeologists made dozen of expeditions throughtout the peninsula.
Yet, not a single shred of evidence for an ancient Isrealite presence was found. I guess the Devil hid the evidence to test our faith.
That crazy Devil.
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