Moses and the Twelve Spies
Spies are sent out to scout the Promised Land, but their report shows that Israel is not yet ready to inherit it.
Spies are sent out to scout the Promised Land, but their report shows that Israel is not yet ready to inherit it.
This post is number 9 in the series The Story of Moses
After fleeing slavery in Egypt, the Israelites have been living in the empty wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. On Mount Sinai itself, God has met with their leader Moses and given his people a law to live by and a promise of a land of their own. In the meantime, however, life in the desert is punishingly hard.
THE Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness between Egypt and their Promised land, and they were years of trouble. A plague of venomous snakes invaded their camp, but Moses raised up a brazen serpent on a pole, and those who looked at it were cured of snakebite.*
They were assailed by the people of Amalek, and prevailed only so long as Moses kept his hands in the air. Whenever through weariness he lowered them, the Amalekites started to rally.*
As they drew nearer to Canaan, the Israelites encountered equally hostile kings in Moab and Edom, and worse was feared in the Land of Promise itself. “Surely it floweth with milk and honey” admitted the spies that Moses sent out, “nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled.”*
Two of the twelve spies, Caleb and Joshua, scolded the rest for their timidity, but the damage was done. It would be many years more before God judged his people had the courage to grasp their inheritance.
Next in series: The Kiss of the Eternal
See Numbers 21:6-9. The episode is picked up by Jesus, who refers it to himself on his cross in John 3:14-15: the sight of the cross acts like an antidote to the bite of the serpent of Eden. The brazen serpent is another example of Old Testament image-making cited by supporters of sacred art during The Restoration of the Icons. While it was used for its proper purpose, it was divinely blessed; after it acquired its own name and cult, as the god Nehushtan, King Hezekiah had it destroyed: see 1 Kings 18:4.
See Numbers 13:17-33. The spies brought back grapes, figs and pomegranates from the Valley of Eshcol, generally thought to be near Hebron, some sixteen miles south of Jerusalem.
See Exodus 17:8-16.