Numbers 20
WE are getting near the end of the forty-year journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, and early in this chapter we are told of the death of Miriam, the sister of Aaron.
No water being found, the people gathered together against Moses and Aaron, bitterly complaining of the difficulties of the way. Moses and Aaron took a low place before God (verse 6), and were told what to do. The people were to be gathered, when Aaron’s rod that budded had been taken out of the tabernacle, and Moses and Aaron were to speak to the rock before the people; it would then give out the needed water.
Moses took the rod, as he was directed, but instead of speaking to the rock, he spoke to the people; instead of speaking to the rock, he struck it with his own rod.
It was right to have struck the rock once (Exodus 17), for the rock was a “type” of Christ (1 Cor. 10:44And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:4)), once only to suffer for sins under the judgment of God. “Speak to the rock” was the right thing to do now; but Moses, for once, speaks and acts in a haughty way, and for this disobedience, God has to tell Moses and Aaron that they shall not bring the people into their homeland.
It must have been a great grief to Moses and Aaron that they were soon to die, and their death would be before the people should go across the Jordan, but it is a serious thing to treat lightly the word of God, and more particularly is this true, we may be sure, in a leader of the people.
As the king of Edom refused to let the people go through his country, the camp of the Israelites is directed southward, to pass around a range of mountains.
Now Aaron dies, and his son, Eleazar is appointed high priest in his stead.
ML 03/23/1924