Why was Israel cursed with forty years of wilderness wandering?

We shall now proceed with our chapter and, in so doing we would call the reader's attention to verse 2. It is certainly a very remarkable parenthesis. "There are eleven days' journey from Horeb, by the way of mount Seir, to Kadesh-barnea." Eleven days! And yet it took them forty years! How was this? Alas! we need not travel far for the answer. It is only too like ourselves. How slowly we get over the ground! What windings and turnings! How often we have to go back and travel over the same ground again and again. We are slow travellers, because we are slow learners. It may be we feel disposed to marvel how Israel could have taken forty years to accomplish a journey of eleven days; but we may, with much greater reason, marvel at ourselves. We, like them, are kept back by our unbelief and slowness of heart; but there is far less excuse for us than for them, inasmuch as our privileges are so very much higher.

First of all the report is very good, and the bunch of grapes — taking two men to carry it — attested the goodness of the land, and then they said, "The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature" (Num. 13:32); that is, the land did not give plenty of provision. Caleb and Joshua stood up for the truth, and were nearly stoned (Num. 13:30, Num. 14:6-10). "They despised the pleasant land" (Ps. 106:24) is the next step. They did not want to go on. It is like a heart now that does not want to go to heaven.

Next they say, "Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would God that we had died in this wilderness. And wherefore has the Lord brought us to this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?" (Num. 14:1-4). Let us go back, they say. Oh, could you suppose it after all the grace shown to them? But, beloved, we know what our own hearts are. Have we never wished to turn back? Ah, every heart in this hall knows how often there has been a turning back. God's answer was this: You say you wish you had died in the wilderness — you shall die in the wilderness. "As for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness, and your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness" (Num. 14:32-33). Says God, You will have to die, only it will take you forty years to do it, "After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years" (Num. 14:34). They must know death.

But here we see again the consequence of having put themselves under law. They must turn again to the wilderness, and their carcases should fall in it. They despised their hope, and it is taken away. Not one above twenty should enter the land, save Caleb and Joshua. The little ones, for whom they pretended to care, God would bring in. In forty years that generation should be wasted in the wilderness, and thus should they know God's breach of promise. They had charged God with bringing them unto the land to die by the sword (ver. 3), and their fearful words come home to them in retributive judgment. "Ye shall know my breach of promise."

This offer, which the Lord thus made, must have been a real test to Moses. To become the father of a greater and mightier nation must have been a very attractive proposition. It would have been so to the flesh of any man. This makes his reaction to it very remarkable, and we see his meekness manifesting itself in striking fashion. His main thought was not of himself at all but of God and His glory. The rebellion of the people was primarily against God, but secondarily against himself, yet he thought only of how such a drastic judgment would be interpreted by the Egyptians and other surrounding nations; and in view of this and of the declared longsuffering and mercy of God, he boldly besought pardon. His plea prevailed and pardon was granted, as regards the death penalty.

Yet this grievous sin entailed penalties in the government of God. Verse 21 begins, "But as truly as I live …" which is the formula of an oath. The Epistle to the Hebrews, which records the immutable oath made to Abraham, also records how He sware in His wrath, "They shall not enter into My rest." The men who brought an evil report of the land should never enter it. Moreover the very next day the people were to begin a fresh journey, not into the land but away from it, thus starting a weary pilgrimage of no less than forty years, and verse 29 says, "Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness." The whole sad story might be graphically summed up by saying — They rejected their unseen God by making a calf: they rejected their visible leader in proposing to elect a captain; and in result their carcases fell outside the land of promise.

This solemn sentence applied, as verse 29 indicates, to all of twenty years old and upwards, and the little ones, on whose behalf they specially murmured, were the ones who would enter the land. Psalm 90, which is a prayer of Moses, alludes to this when he says, "All our days are passed away in Thy wrath … the days of our years are three score years and ten …" This would apply in very literal fashion to the people we are considering. The judgment on the ten spies fell at once as verse 37 shows.

(4) The forty years are announced in a distinct communication. In them, those that had desired to die in the wilderness should die there, while their little ones whom they had mourned over as to fall a prey to the enemy, should be brought into the land in the meanwhile bearing the consequences of their fathers' sin, as needful for those who were children of such fathers: for each day of fruitless search a year in the wilderness. Thank God, however, for the very reason that these were appointed of Him, we cannot say that these were fruitless. Shall we say so at last of any of the Lord's ways with us here? Nay, the more painful even, the more profitable. Divine love could inflict no useless pain, even as it cannot withhold the pain that profits.

We now come to the decisive point in the history of the wilderness, the refusal of the people to enter the land, when brought to its very borders, by which they incur the penalty of forty years of wandering, and the death of the whole generation (except two persons) in the wilderness. For these, therefore, the whole character of their life is altered. They are not pilgrims any more, but wanderers; if not aimlessly, yet their aim mere self-preservation for these forty years, so much so that the record of them is not given to us: we have only a few incidents carefully chosen, and which reveal a condition of things conformable to this beginning. Progress stopped does not stop declension, which ripens on the contrary into that rebellion of Korah and his company, which is the crowning sin of all. Of this period it is that God marks the character in Amos afterward in the inquiry, "Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chinn your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." (Amos 5:25-26.) Circumcision likewise ceases, as we see by the renewal of it when they enter Canaan. (Joshua 5:2-6.) Thus the very sign of their covenant with Jehovah is lost, and grace alone carries them at last through Jordan, and gives them possession of the land from which they turn back here.

Thus, then, the people had to turn back into the wilderness, and wander there for forty years. There was nothing else for it. They would not go up into the land, in simple faith, with God; and He would not go up with them in their self-will and self-confidence; they had therefore simply to accept the consequence of their disobedience. If they would not enter the land, they must fall in the wilderness.

Twelve spies had searched out the land of Canaan, but only two of them brought back good news. The ten "brought. an evil report," saying, "the land, which we have passed through to search it out, is a land that eateth up its inhabitants; and all the people that we have seen in it are men of great stature; and there have we seen giants." (Num. 13:32).

As a result of this message of unbelief "the whole assembly lifted up their voice, and cried" (ch. 14:1). Further, they murmured against Moses (v. 2), wished they had died in Egypt (v. 2) and accused God (v. 3). Their proposal is a shocking one: "Let us make a captain, and let us return to Egypt." When Joshua and Caleb brought a good report (vv. 6-9), "the whole assembly said that they should be stoned with stones" (v. 10).

"A hopeless case," we might say, and indeed, God's comment was: "How long will this people despise Me? and how long will they not believe Me, for all the signs which I have done among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and destroy them." The charge against the people was unbelief because God had told them that He was going to give them the land and that it was a good land. Therefore, there was no need to send spies at all, and even after the spies' had given their reports, the people should have trusted God to enable them to conquer the land as promised.

In addition to this justified charge, there is again a promise to Moses to be made "a nation greater and mightier than they." And again, Moses intercedes for the people. Forgetting himself, he appeals to God in favour of the people. His intercession is based on the implications for God's glory (vv. 14-16) and on God's attrib­utes of loving-kindness and His gracious dealings with the people on previous occasions (vv. 18-19). The consequences of this inci­dent are twofold: in response to Moses' intercession, Jehovah pardons the iniquity of the people (v. 20). At the same time, governmental dealings with the people are announced: all those who were 20 years of age or more would have to die in the wilder­ness instead of entering the land, and the time of the journey would be prolonged by 40 years (v. 34).

It is wonderful to think that out of that vast assembly of six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, there were only two that had faith in the living God. We do not of course, speak of Moses, but merely of the congregation. The whole assembly, with two very brilliant exceptions indeed, was governed by a spirit of unbelief. They could not trust God to bring them into the land; nay, they thought He had brought them into the wilderness to die there; and surely we may say, they reaped according to their dark unbelief. The ten false witnesses died by the plague; and the many thousands who received their false witness were compelled to turn back into the wilderness, there to wander up and down for forty years, and then die and be buried.

But Joshua and Caleb stood on the blessed ground of faith in the living God — that faith which fills the soul with the most joyful confidence and courage. And of them we may say, they reaped according to their faith. God must always honour the faith which He has implanted in the soul. It is His own gift, and He cannot, we may say with reverence, but own it wherever it exists. Joshua and Caleb were enabled, in the simple power of faith, to withstand a tremendous tide of infidelity. They held fast their confidence in God in the face of every difficulty; and he signally honoured their faith in the end, for while the carcasses of their brethren were mouldering in the dust of the wilderness, their feet were treading the vine-clad hills and fertile valleys of the land of Canaan. The former declared that God had brought them forth to die in the wilderness; and they were taken at their word. The latter declared that God was able to bring them into the land, and they were taken at their word.

Verses 18 and 19 expose to our view the root of this rebellion on the part of Israel: it was not mere passive lack of faith, but active unbelief. The testimony of God had been declared: they had heard it, and had seen pub­lic evidences of its trustworthiness; but through fear of present discomfort and opposition of the Canaanites, they chose to disbelieve God. He told them to enter the land: they refused: only unbelief kept them out.