Biblion Bible Commentary
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Let Us Make a Captain and Return
Numbers 14:1-19
1 All the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. · WEB
The nation votes to go back to Egypt, and Moses talks God out of destroying it by arguing about what Egypt would say.
The reaction to the report is a night of weeping and then a proposal: let's choose a leader, and let's return into Egypt Numbers 14:4.
That is the lowest point in the wilderness. Not a complaint about food or water — a formal motion to replace Moses and reverse the exodus. Everything God has done since the plagues is being voted down.
The wish they express is the one that will be granted in the cruellest possible way: we wish that we had died in the land of Egypt, or that we had died in this wilderness! Numbers 14:2. Within twenty verses the second half is the sentence.
Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes and make the counter-case, and its center is a single clause: they are bread for us. Their defense is removed from over them, and Yahweh is with us Numbers 14:9.
The giants are food. What the ten called an unassailable people, these two call a meal — and the reason is not that they have better information but that they have counted a different party.
The congregation's answer is to reach for stones Numbers 14:10.
Then God's proposal, and it is a real one: I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they Numbers 14:12.
Moses is offered everything Abraham was promised, with his own name on it. He does not take a moment to consider it.
His argument has two parts and neither is about the people's merits. The first is what Egypt will conclude — the nations will say that God was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness Numbers 14:16. The second is a quotation. He recites God's own self-description back to him: Yahweh is slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience Numbers 14:18.
He pleads God's reputation and God's character, in that order, and asks for pardon according to the greatness of your loving kindness, and just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now Numbers 14:19.
The precedent he cites is the record of every previous time they did this.
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