Sin of Murmuring in Numbers

Introduction

The children of Israel were not happy with Moses and Aaron leading them to the Promised Land from Egypt. They constantly kept murmuring and complaining that they preferred the old life of slavery, compared to their experience in the wilderness, which would lead them to a life of freedom in the Promised Land of Israel.

What happened

The children of Israel were slaves in Egypt and were made to work hard for long hours for about 400 years. Hence they knew nothing about any other form of living and kept looking back to that familiar form of living and complained and murmured when things were different. Not having known freedom, they did know about why it was good, hence did not look forward to it.

Here are some of the instances recorded in the Book of Numbers where the children of Israel committed the sin of murmuring and complaining.

• Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!” (Numbers 11:4-6)
• Then Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and the anger of the Lord was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased. (Numbers 11:10)
• But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness! Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?” (Numbers 13:31-14:3)
• Now the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation complain against him by bringing a bad report of the land, those very men who brought the evil report about the land, died by the plague before the Lord (Numbers 14:36-37)
• Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” (Numbers 21:4-5)

Why Murmuring

The above image is taken from here.

In Numbers 11:5 the children of Israel say that they “ate freely in Egypt”. It is possible that the Egyptians took care of providing the slaves prepared food so that the slaves did not have to worry about preparing food and would work long hours as the Egyptians wanted them to work. So except for food they did not know about any other pleasant things of life that God had freely provided.

In the Wilderness God had miraculously provided Manna every day and they could not see the miraculous provision of God and only craved for the food that they had been familiar with in Egypt. So instead of looking forward to a life of freedom in the Promised Land of Israel flowing with Milk and Honey they were looking back to a life of slavery in Egypt. They called the miracle daily provision of Manna by God as “worthless bread”.

They were slaves in Egypt and did not know what true freedom is like. So they were not prepared to take the land provided to them by God and thought of themselves as grasshoppers and the inhabitants of the land as giants and hence gave the children of Israel a bad report. The report of 10 spies discouraged more than 600,000 able bodied males above the age of 20 from going forward and owning the land that God had given them.

Application to our day

To us Egypt represents the World. So we should not focus on following and doing the things of the World. Just as the children of Israel were called to the Promised Land of freedom we should seek to do things that are in accordance with God’s way for our life and be liberated from being bound to the things of the World.

Lessons we can learn

Some of the lessons we can learn from the murmuring of children of Israel

• We should not constantly complain because God is displeased with complaining.
• We should not yield to intense craving.
• We should not look back into the past but look forward to the ways that God leads us into.

About this Post

This post is adapted from the Term Paper that I submitted to World Video Bible School as a part of my study of Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy Course.

You can read about the Life of Moses in Exodus from the earlier course of Exodus.

You can read about The God I believe in here.

If you like my blogs please visit https://www.facebook.com/fjpandiaraj and like that page to be notified of my future posts in Facebook. You can also find links to my older posts there.

'Janata Darbar' of Arvind Kejriwal and Moses of the Bible

On this Saturday (11th January, 2014), the Delhi Chief Minister from the Aam Aadmi Party, Arvind Kejriwal, and his ministers sat outside the Delhi Secretariat to personally hear the public grievances and to redress them.

The Delhi Public had such a large number of grievances and according to news reports, more than 7,000 people turned up for the event. Kejriwal, in spite of all kinds of refusal for security, had to run for cover to his office surrounded by a protection cordon to avoid a stampede.

This reminded me of the mistakes of Moses, the popular leader in the Old Testament of the Bible, and the wise counsel of his father-in-law Jethro. Here is that event as described in the Message Version of the Bible in the Book of Exodus Chapter 18 Verses 13-27.

13-14 The next day Moses took his place to judge the people. People were standing before him all day long, from morning to night. When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, “What’s going on here? Why are you doing all this, and all by yourself, letting everybody line up before you from morning to night?”

15-16 Moses said to his father-in-law, “Because the people come to me with questions about God. When something comes up, they come to me. I judge between a man and his neighbor and teach them God’s laws and instructions.”

17-23 Moses’ father-in-law said, “This is no way to go about it. You’ll burn out, and the people right along with you. This is way too much for you—you can’t do this alone. Now listen to me. Let me tell you how to do this so that God will be in this with you. Be there for the people before God, but let the matters of concern be presented to God. Your job is to teach them the rules and instructions, to show them how to live, what to do. And then you need to keep a sharp eye out for competent men—men who fear God, men of integrity, men who are incorruptible—and appoint them as leaders over groups organized by the thousand, by the hundred, by fifty, and by ten. They’ll be responsible for the everyday work of judging among the people. They’ll bring the hard cases to you, but in the routine cases they’ll be the judges. They will share your load and that will make it easier for you. If you handle the work this way, you’ll have the strength to carry out whatever God commands you, and the people in their settings will flourish also.”

24-27 Moses listened to the counsel of his father-in-law and did everything he said. Moses picked competent men from all Israel and set them as leaders over the people who were organized by the thousand, by the hundred, by fifty, and by ten. They took over the everyday work of judging among the people. They brought the hard cases to Moses, but in the routine cases they were the judges. Then Moses said good-bye to his father-in-law who went home to his own country.

This is possibly the first time in history where a decentralized organization was setup. According to Wikipedia  Moses lived in the time period of 1391-1271 BC. Aam Aadmi Party is talking about decentralizing decision making process. But when it came to grievance redresses it was trying to do it in a centralized way and failed on the first day somewhat like what Moses did initially.

I know that from the above Bible passage many lessons can be learnt without actually trying them by trial and error. Here is another passage from the Bible that reflects that thought taken from the First Book of Paul to the Corinthians Chapter 10 Verses 11 and 12.

11-12 These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence.

People, irrespective of time and space, are designed and created by the Almighty God in the same way. So, irrespective of cultures they will behave in similar way in similar situations. The Bible is often described as the Maker's Manual of Human Beings.The Bible Illustrations cover very large number of situations of Human Dynamics and can be used as excellent Case Studies on Human Behavior.

Update on 14th January, 2014.

Aam Aadmi Party has decided to cancel Janata Darbars. Now will only take online complaints.

Update on 22nd January, 2014

Enjoy the following 'Politoon' from India Today Group.

Dishoom- dishoom at AAP's Janata Darbar.

Update on 3rd February, 2014

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