The Wandering
John Shuck
First Presbyterian
Church
Elizabethton,
Tennessee
January 20, 2008
Numbers 13:1-14:35
The Lord said to Moses, 2‘Send men to spy out the land of
Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites; from each of their ancestral
tribes you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.’
17 Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said
to them, ‘Go up there into the Negeb, and go up into the hill country, 18and
see what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or
weak, whether they are few or many, 19and whether the land they live in is good
or bad, and whether the towns that they live in are unwalled or fortified,
20and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or
not. Be bold, and bring some of the fruit of the land.’ Now it was the season
of the first ripe grapes.
21 So they went up and spied out
the land
23And they came to the Wadi Eshcol, and cut down from there
a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between
two of them. They also brought some pomegranates and figs.
25 At the end of forty days they returned from spying out
the land. 26And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the
Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to
them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27And
they told him, ‘We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk
and honey, and this is its fruit. 28Yet the people who live in the land are
strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the
descendants of Anak there. 29The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb; the
Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country; and the
Canaanites live by the sea, and along the Jordan.’
30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let
us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.’ 31Then
the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against this
people, for they are stronger than we are.’ 32So they brought to the Israelites
an unfavourable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, ‘The land
that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and
all the people that we saw in it are of great size. 33There we saw the Nephilim
(the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like
grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’
14Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the
people wept that night. 2And all the Israelites complained against Moses and
Aaron; the whole congregation said to them, ‘Would that we had died in the land
of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! 3Why is the Lord
bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones
will become booty; would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?’ 4So they
said to one another, ‘Let us choose a captain, and go back to Egypt.’
5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the
assembly of the congregation of the Israelites. 6And Joshua son of Nun and
Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore
their clothes 7and said to all the congregation of the Israelites, ‘The land
that we went through as spies is an exceedingly good land. 8If the Lord is
pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that
flows with milk and honey. 9Only, do not rebel against the Lord; and do not
fear the people of the land, for they are no more than bread for us; their
protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.’
10But the whole congregation threatened to stone them.
26 And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying: 27How
long shall this wicked congregation complain against me? I have heard the
complaints of the Israelites, which they complain against me. 28Say to them,
‘As I live’, says the Lord, ‘I will do to you the very things I heard you say:
29your dead bodies shall fall in this very wilderness; and of all your number,
included in the census, from twenty years old and upwards, who have complained
against me, 30not one of you shall come into the land in which I swore to
settle you, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 31But your
little ones, who you said would become booty, I will bring in, and they shall
know the land that you have despised. 32But as for you, your dead bodies shall
fall in this wilderness. 33And your children shall be shepherds in the
wilderness for forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the
last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. 34According to the number of
the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you
shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’ 35I
the Lord have spoken; surely I will do thus to all this wicked congregation
gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end,
and there they shall die.
Hic sunt dracones
“Here be dragons” is a phrase from the world of cartography. The phrase supposedly was written on old
maps to designate uncharted territory.
Although this phrase has been popularized, it was rarely used.
The only historical map that contains the phrase is The
Lenox Globe that dates to 1510. It is the
second or third oldest known globe. It
is the only known historical map that contains the Latin phrase, “hic sunt
dracones” or “here be dragons.” The
phrase appears on the Eastern Coast of Asia.
It may not be about dragons. It may
also be in reference to the Dagroians, a ghoulish people which Marco Polo
described as feasting upon the dead. In
either case, it is a pretty scary place.
The Borgia Map of the world around 1430 has a dragon figure
across Asia with a Latin inscription that is rendered in English: "Here also are men having large horns
four feet long, and there are even serpents of such magnitude that they can eat
an ox whole."
This phrase “Here be dragons” has come to represent the
dangers of the unknown. “Here be
dragons” can elicit the challenge within oneself to venture out into the danger
on a hero’s quest. Or it can make a
person think twice and say, “There is no place like home.”
The Lewis and Clark Caverns are near Whitehall,
Montana. I have probably been through
the caverns ten times since I was a child.
It is a great place to take visitors from out of state. You can take a tour of these caverns deep
into the mountain. Near the beginning
of the tour after you descend a number of steps you come to this first landing. In the middle of the landing is a huge
rock.
It is called “Decision Rock.” This is the point in the tour when the tour
guide becomes solemn and serious. Every
time I went on the tour the guide would say something like, “This is your last
chance to turn back. I can take anyone
back who doesn’t want to go ahead. But
after we go ahead there is no turning back.”
Hence, decision rock. The cave
pilgrims need to make a choice. Forge
ahead or return to the entrance. I never saw anyone turn back, although the
guides would say that on occasion, some folks do. After all, there be dragons or at least tight
squeezes.
Our heroes in our biblical story have reached decision
rock. After their dramatic escape from Egypt, they
go to Mount Sinai. That is the place
where Moses is given the Ten Commandments.
According to the saga, these commandments had a lot of footnotes. The second half of Exodus and all of
Leviticus are the extra laws that go along with the Big Ten. Finally, when we reach the Book of Numbers,
the narrative picks up.
They haven’t been in the wilderness for very long. After a few weeks, they arrive at the edge of
the Land of Canaan and YHWH tells Moses to send out spies. Moses picks one man from each of the twelve
tribes to check out the land. After a
forty day reconnaissance mission, they come back with a report. There are two reports. A majority report and a minority report. The
majority report is given by ten of the spies.
They don’t like the looks of things.
They tell the people that there are big and strong, like the Hittites
and the Jebusites.
According to the minority report, filed by Caleb and Joshua,
the land is lush and filled with grapes, figs, and pomegranates. It is
a land of milk and honey. There are
people there but we can take them. The
Lord is with us!
But, then the other ten spies exaggerate their report a
bit. Not only do the Jebusites, and the
Amalekites and so forth live there, also in the land of Canaan are the dreaded
Nephilim. We first heard of the Nephilim
in the early chapters of Genesis. These
Nephilim were mythical figures, offspring of gods and women. This is what is written about the Nephilim in
Genesis 6:4:
“When people began to
multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, 2the
sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all
that they chose. 3Then the Lord said, ‘My
spirit shall not abide*
in mortals for ever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred and
twenty years.’ 4The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and
also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who
bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of
renown.”
According to Genesis, the sons of gods knowing the
attractive human women in the biblical way is the last straw. YHWH decides to wipe out all living things
except Noah and two of every kind of animal with a big flood. So, how then, do we still have Nephilim
after the flood? Either the Nephilim
survive the flood, or the spies are lying, or there is a hole in the plot. At any rate, the threat of the Nephilim is
the argument that wins the day. A little
fear-mongering often does wonders.
The congregation votes with the majority report. No way are they going to go into the Land of
Canaan. There be dragons. There be Nephilim. So they decide to elect a new captain and go
back to Egypt. It was better in Egypt. Better to be slaves.
Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb plead with the people to
trust YHWH. But it is no use. The congregation threatens to stone
them.
Then YHWH gets angry.
YHWH tells Moses that he has had enough of their whining and
whimpering. He is going to wipe them all
out and start over with Moses. But
Moses, like Abraham before him, pleads with YHWH not to act rashly. He gives an interesting argument.
“But Moses said to
YHWH….”Now if you kill this people all at one time, then the nations who have
heard about you will say, “It
is because the Lord was not able to bring this people
into the land he swore to give them that he has slaughtered them in the
wilderness.”
Moses tells YHWH that it won’t look good on his resume. Everyone will laugh at you YHWH. You will be considered a failure. So YHWH reconsiders. He decides instead on an interesting
solution. The people will wander in the
wilderness for forty years, one year for each day the spies were in
Canaan. They will wander until everyone
over the age of 20 dies. Except for
Caleb and Joshua none of the wicked congregation will go into the Promised Land. That is why the Israelites wandered in the
wilderness for forty years.
How do we enter this story?
How does it become something other than a bizarre fable on one hand or
something that literally happened on the other? The theme of this saga repeats itself
throughout the Hebrew scriptures and in the New Testament. One of the main problems that YHWH has with
his people is that they don’t trust him.
Yet YHWH does not always come across as trustworthy. Remember YHWH was the one who told Abraham to
sacrifice his son, then at the last minute, said, “Just kidding.” Literary critic Harold Bloom, has written a
book I recommend, Jesus and Yahweh: The
Names Divine. In an interview about
the book, Harold Bloom speaks about YHWH and what the name means. The name comes from the story when Moses is
told to go down to Egypt and speak to Pharoah.
Moses asks, “They will laugh at me.
Who shall I say sent me?” Yahweh
responds: “Say that ehyeh asher
ehyeh has sent you.” Bloom says
that phrase means “I will be who I will be” which really means, “I will be
present when I choose to be present.”
Harold Bloom goes on to say:
“… that necessarily
also means, "And I will be absent wherever and whenever I choose to be
absent." And there's a lot more evidence in the last 2,000 years for the
absence of this personage than the presence.”
http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/IP_Kress_Bloom.htm
What do we make of YHWH?
Here is what Bloom says about him:
You have to be
absolutely a bad reader or crazy or so bound by Judaic tradition of that kind
which produces Satmars or Orthodox... how can you possibly like him? He's very
bad news…. There's a kind of scamp in there. But he also goes violently crazy
as he leads the Israelite host in that ridiculous, mad 40 years [of] wandering
through the wilderness, trekking back and forth. He gets crazier and crazier
and the poor things get crazier and crazier…. Yahweh is not a theological God.
Theology is Greek, as the word itself indicates. Yahweh is a human,
all-too-human, much, much-too-human God, and very scary. He is irascible, he's
difficult, he's unpredictable, and he himself doesn't seem to know what he is
doing.
I don’t think we can enter these stories unless we allow
ourselves to read them in the way that Bloom reads them. YHWH is not the immovable mover. He is not the god of the philosophers. We cannot, unless we ignore the text itself,
think of YHWH as unchanging, all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. That is later theology put on the
Bible. YHWH as Bloom writes, is
irascible, difficult, and unpredictable.
It doesn’t take long to read the
Bible before you have issues with YHWH.
So what kind of people conceive of a god like YHWH? If the gods we tell stories about are windows
into the way we see the world, what does YHWH show us about the world? How did these authors of the Bible experience
their world?
The real world must have seemed to them to be irascible,
difficult, and unpredictable--like the god they told stories about. Wars happen.
Floods happen. Crops don’t
grow. Good people suffer and the wicked
seem to prosper. People die in the
wilderness never reaching their promise.
And yet life goes on. Another
generation is born. People find time in
the midst of their worries to dance, sing and tell stories about their
troubles. These ancient people found
meaning by telling stories about their experience of life. They did so by personifying life through a god
who was as unpredictable, violent, and crazy as life itself.
And yet, they said, trust anyway. Rather than fight life, trust it. What other options do we have? We can trust or we can live in fear. We can despair. We can feel sorry for ourselves. We can be bitter.
As I read the stories in the Torah, I am reminded of the
stories in the gospels, particularly, the Gospel of Mark. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is also unpredictable
and irascible. The disciples never
understand him. Throughout the Gospel
of Mark, Jesus tells them not to be afraid.
Trust. But what is to trust? The guy is insane. He goes off and gets himself crucified.
One of the most challenging aspects of living is our fear of
what could happen. Here be dragons. The Nephilim will devour us. We might get crucified. Other people won’t like what we decide to
do. We are not strong enough. Disaster will befall us. The crazy promise of the Bible is not that
those things won’t happen. They might.
The message that the authors of the Torah and the Gospels
leave us is “don’t fight it and don’t run from it. Live through it.” Neither YHWH nor Jesus will keep us
safe. Both of them are just the
opposite. They are not safe. They are risky. C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia depicted Christ as the lion, Aslan. Aslan, according to the books, is not a tame
lion. I think that means that Life is
not tame either.
Jesus and YHWH are cut from the same cloth. They are persistent. Jesus and YHWH are parables for Life. They are the invitation to seize the
opportunity. They are the invitation to
live with integrity. If we are going to
live with some degree of inner peace and joy, we have to take life for what it
is and not complain about what it is not.
Our heroes, our traveling tribes, made a choice at decision
rock. They retreated and lost an
opportunity. They acted on fear rather
than on trust. They spent the next forty
years moaning and complaining until they died.
They didn’t face the
Nephilim. They didn’t enjoy the milk and
honey either.
Here be dragons. Let us venture forth!
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