BibleProject - Numbers Q + R

Episode Date: April 6, 2017

This is our Q+R on the book of Numbers in the Old Testament. This audio originally came from a Youtube series of Q+R's that Jon and Tim did. You can view the original Q+R video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTwaNoZ35NA And our videos on the book of Numbers here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zebxH-5o-SQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp5MIrMZFqo Thank you to all our supporters! You are so meaningful to us! Q's and Timestamps It seems like the pagan sorcerer Balaam has an awareness or a relationship with the Lord, the god of the Hebrews. Is this possible? (2:50) Did Balaam really have the power to bless and curse people? (9:09) Does Balaam predict Jesus as the coming king and Messiah of Israel in his final prophecy in Numbers 24? (10:35) What is the deal with the story of the bronze snakes in Numbers 21? (15:43) What is the "Book of the Wars of the Lord" in Numbers 21? (21:50) What does it mean to "bless" in Numbers? Especially the priestly blessing in the Old Testament? (26:58) Why is Moses unable to enter the promised land as a punishment when he strikes the rock in Numbers 20 ? Doesn't that seem harsh? (32:20) What is the difference between being ceremonially impure/unclean and being sinful? (41:04) Music Credits: Defender Instrumental by Rosasharn Music.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. This summer, we've been releasing a series that was originally aired on our YouTube channel on a live stream. We've gotten requests to take that audio and put it on a podcast, so we're doing just that. In this episode, Tim and I host a Q&R, a question and response on the book of numbers. The book of numbers is a wild ride and the Old Testament. It documents Israel's journey through the wilderness after they were rescued from Egypt. They're on their way to the Promised Land if they could just get their

act together. Tim and I discuss questions about the bronze snake, the pagan sorcerer Balum, and the difference in the Old Testament between being simple and being unclean. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. So, this is just book of numbers. Five sections. Five sections overall. Yeah, the book's one big journey. And there are three collections of stories, one around Mount Sinai at first. Where there, yeah, Israel's ending their one year stay.

They've been here for a year. A year. In a desert. Yeah. Under a mountain. Yeah. Hanging out. Yep.

Getting along. Yep. That's a long back time trip. It's a long camping trip. They get organized, you know, they get the camps, the ordering of the camps. It's all cool. They take a census. If I was there for a year, at that point, I'd probably be like, you know what, this

might just be home. You might just be chilling here for us to come out. Yeah, it's a pretty desolate part of the world. You'd be anxious to get out of there. Yeah, it's not a great place to stay. So numbers actually means in the wilderness. That's right. The book of numbers is it's a Greek name, and it refers to the two censuses.

The censuses? Sensei? I don't know. There's one at the beginning, and there's one at the end of the book. The Hebrew name, which is much older, is Bob Midbar in the wilderness. So they begin in the wilderness. They end in the wilderness. And the book has two travel sections that frame the center,

which is a bunch of tragic stories that also take place in the wilderness. Right here. Yep, so different places of the wilderness, but it's all on this long-sitting journey. So there's like five sections inside, and then they travel for a while. There's stories while they travel, then they're in Peron, and that's where the spy thing happens and stuff, and that's somewhere in the wilderness there. And they travel again, and then they get to the Plains of Moab,

which is right before they get to the Jordan River. That's right. So that's the structure of the book. Lots of really interesting stories in here, which we'll jump into with questions, I suppose. Let's do that. There are a bunch of questions about a story that takes place right here after the second

travel narrative, the scene shifts to a strange set of stories about a guy named Baylam and then the King of Moab, Balak, and Balak hires Baylam as a sorcerer to pronounce curses on the nation of Israel. Because, like Pharaoh, he's freaked out this large group of people coming through. And you think like they want my land. They were after his land, but what does he do? And so he hires this dude to try to take him down. Yeah. So strategy one might be like, let's go just fight him. But a better thing to do is hire some dude.

Hire a guy. So God will just curse him. That's right. Hire a guy for hire. He is. And actually, here's what's interesting. You guys, Google, well, well, have to spell it. In the late 60s, in the modern country of Jordan, they were doing, I think it was something

like a building was getting torn down or something, but they discovered this ancient set of structures that went back to the realite time period. And they found these texts that are called the deir ala text. So deir, deir, and then ala text. Deir. Deir, deir ala. I-R-L-L-A-H. I-R-S. And then if you Google deir ala and Bailem, you'll get it.

And what they discovered these ancient texts that mention Ba'lum. It's actually a record of him prophesying in the name of God most High. And anyway, so what these texts showed us is that Ba'lum was a well-known sorcerer in the ancient world. And the Israelites weren't the only people who knew about him in their text. This guy was a legend. Yeah, so kind of like the way Nostradamus

is kind of a well-known as a predictive. So you'd be like, oh, Baylam, I know about that guy. They got that guy? Yeah, totally. Yeah, so when we read about Baylam, we should all be going like, oh, Baileum, I know about that guy. Yeah. They got that guy. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so when we read about Baileum, we should all be going, like, oh, this is not Baileum's coming. Yeah, Baileum. And I like how we drew him here.

Here, I'll show you the shum in on him. The tribal. He's going to my screen again. He's not, if you Google image search Baileum, you get like little, like, chubby guys on donkeys that, like, they still cute. Yeah. And you're like, oh, that guy. Yeah. Baileum's so cute like, oh, that guy. Yeah. Caleb's so cute.

And his donkey talked to him. Yes. But like this guy, he like curses people for living. Yes. He's probably pretty gnarly. Yes, he is. So we have a handful of questions about Balan. So I just kind of want to hit them

because they raise different questions about Balan. So one is Aurelia D, who you always ask perceptive, very good questions. Aurelia, you're down, yonder here, and you ask the question here. It seems like Baelin has a relationship with or an understanding of the God of Israel, but is this possible for a pagan sorcerer?

That's a really good question, apparently. Somehow he has a pagan sorcerer. That's a really good question. Apparently, somehow he has a word of it. Yeah, yeah, like almost every story that's in the Torah, there are questions that we come with or questions of the story raises that it doesn't attempt to answer. And that's one of them. Is how does this pagan ancient sorcerer actually connect to the God of Israel and the God of Israel reveals things to him? And I think from the Israel, I author's point of view, it's a way of saying, yeah, God isn't just,

the God of Israel isn't just a tribal God. It's the creator of all. And so he can reveal himself to anybody, and he does so to bail on. So maybe he got word somehow, or maybe God told him somehow, like a wicked conjecture, but we're not talking about like he doesn't live in some so crazy far away place. If you were just going to hike to Moab, from Sinai, let's say. Sure. The parts should just take a week, right? Let's put.

Yes. But what's interesting, the Israelites haven't been in the land, just the patriarchs wandering around. So the question is, how does he even know about Yahweh the God of Israel? The story of someone, let's just say, someone who was at Mount Sinai takes takes off, right, and goes,

I'm just gonna explore myself. And he starts telling the stories. I mean, whatever. We do know when Israelites get to Jericho, Rehab, is in the city, and she says all the Canaanites, we heard about what your God did for you. And so the God of Israel's reputation was spreading. We know that.

But this is more. This is a pagan sorcerer who can do powerful things. His words have power and he connects them to the God of Israel. So I'm just affirming it's bizarre. And I think the story assumes and knows that it's bizarre. That's why it's telling the story. and knows that it's bizarre, that's why it's telling the story, it's because it's remarkable. And then specifically, that God,

even though this is a powerful sorcerer in the ancient world, actually he's just a servant of the God of Israel, and he can only say what the God of Israel wants. So take the most powerful sorcerer in the ancient world and put them in the story and what does he do? He has to do what the God way wants. That's right. And what he always wants is to hook these guys up even though they've been.

Yes. Been rumbling through the wilderness. Yeah. Up to this point Israel, the nation has been behaving like a toddler on a temper tantrum. I think I would if I spent 40 years in a desert. That's true. But to fight what they're doing, God wants the blesses people. So your question's a good one, Aurelia. So kick puncher, 3000, who we now know is Christy Short. Yeah, fighting behind that robotic name.

You put the question this way, similar type of question. But you asked, God told Bailem not to curse the Israelites. Does this mean that Bailem really had the power to bless or curse those whom you wished, if so? How? So the story about Bailem, again assumes that he's a powerful sorcerer, who the story turns out to show us, is really not powerful compared to Yahweh, the God of Israel. So did he really have power to curse from the perception of Balan, absolutely. Did he actually have these powers? Again, the story doesn't give us most of the answers that we've...

But in that time period... He was well known as a powerful person. And people would have totally been like, of course. Yeah, that's why... That would have been down about that. That's right. That's why the King of Moab goes... It gives the money to... Yeah, Yeah.

So it raises all other theological questions that we have. Right. That the story just occurs, we tap into some power. Yeah. Yeah. Which the story I think is saying, no. Everybody's subservient to the God of Israel. And their power is like nothing compared to God.

Yeah, that's the point. And sweet, yeah, because there's more puzzles about Baalem. Oh yeah, there was a first question, right? Garen, Garen Forsyth. I don't think I've, we've heard from Garen before. Oh, Garen. Hey, man. In the video, we talked about in the third Baalem speech,

we talked about how Baaelim predicted the king who will bless all nations. Does Baelim talk about that blessing? Does talk about that coming king? There's only language about smashing the nations. Is there something in the Hebrew text that we don't see? Great question.

The King of Moab hires him, he tries to get him to curse Israel three times, it doesn't work. And then, Ba'lim, in the fourth, goes on with the fourth poem, and then some others after that. So in the second and third poems, in the second poem he mentions how God brought Israel as a nation up out of Egypt. And it's like he says, he is for Israel, like the horns of a wild ox. It's this cool metaphor. But then in the third poem, he talks about, you'll see it here,

it's in chapter 24, he talks about how a king and an exalted kingdom is going to come out of Israel. And then he uses the same words he used about the nation in the third pond and applies them to this king in the fourth pond about how God's going to bring this king on his own Exodus and deliver this king out of Egypt. And God will be for this king like the horns of wild dogs, and that this king will defeat all of his enemies and so on. And then at the very end of that poem, there's a little, either it's Bailem talking, or the

author of the penitook attaches a little post-it note, a little editorial post-it note, I think, where he quotes from poem of Judah's blessing at the end of book of Genesis and attaches it here about this king being like a lion. And then after that, there's a quotation from God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12. So I think the author of the penitent is connecting this king that Bala mentions to the king promised to come from the line of Judah in Genesis 49 connected to God's plan to bless all nations through Abraham's family in Genesis 12. And then there's another poem that goes on after that as fourth poem and he calls this king the star that will come out of

Jacob and a scepter coming out of Egypt. And he's going to be victorious over all of Israel's enemies and so on. What's the purpose of the lion? That's from Genesis 3. Or from, I'm sorry, Genesis. The lion is from... Jacob's touching at your door?

Jacob's blessing of the tribe of Judah at the end of the book of Genesis. Yeah, right here. The people rise like a lioness. No, it's right. It's at the end of Numbers 24. This is Numbers 24-9. Like a lion, they crouch and lie down like a lioness

who dangerous, like a lioness. Yeah, it's a quotation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So I think, yeah, the author of the Pentateuch in these poems is connecting us back up to the main themes. So here's Bela. That's right. He hasn't been attached to this whole thing.

He's heard somehow. And in his, which call it prayer, his incantation, he's like, whatever it is, he starts basically prophesying about this Messiah that we've learned about in very cryptic ways, the light of Judah, the seed of the woman, the seed of the woman, going to crush the snake and then the promise to abour him, that through him, all the world will be blessed. So in his incantation are all of these things. Yeah, that's right. So cool though. It's totally cool.

Balaam is basically prophesying about Jesus. Yeah, from the King of Moab's point of view, he hired Balaam to curse his enemies. What Balaam ends up doing is pronouncing Moab's downfall because of the king that will come forth from Israel. And then that king, the author, connects back to all of these key messianic promises from earlier in the book. Yeah. Yeah, the poems of Balam are absolutely crucial for understanding the message and main themes of the Torah, and they come from the most unlikely place.

Yeah. Which is, I guess, fairly typical. That's typical for the Bible. For the Torah as a whole. They're the Torah. Yeah, most of the main characters are big screw-ups. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, the Balam stories. So, thanks for your good questions about Balam. They're odd stories, but they're super, super important. Cool. That's Balam. Yeah. That's Balam. What are their questions? Oh, Malam. Cool, that's Baalum. Yeah. That's Baalum. What are their questions? Oh man, there's lots of good questions.

Ben Brown, you had a good question. I think you've asked a question before. There is a story here in chapter 20. It's in the second wilderness section about the people grumbling. And then God sends snakes. It's the snake attacks. It's very odd. And so God tells Moses to make a bronze snake

on a pole. And then you ask, could you speak more about it? Well, the purpose is image of the thing that's killing them. Yeah. And then this Brought idol snake statue. Yeah. They look to it and then if they had been bit, they're going to be put. They're going to be put.

Grants them healing and life. Yeah. Yeah, it's very odd. Right. Very odd. Very. If I went to church and there was a guy with a bronze snake and he's like, look at this and you're going to be better.

I'm going to be like, I'm out of here. Yeah, that's the way I know. Oh, yeah, you get a little strange. It's super strange. But in that time, there must be, I mean, what would I have been experiencing if I saw Moses doing this and I'm an Israelite? I would have been like, that's... Well, yes, but it's very...

Well, it's not a representation of God, because they did that once on Mount Sinai with a golden calf thing, and that didn't go well for them. So it's clearly, like God tells Moses, make a bronze symbolic representation of the animal that's out there biting people. The symbol, the symbol is a paradox. It's a symbol of the thing that, of his judgment. He's rendering is, you know, and it, when you pull the story out of context, you're like,

oh, God's really a jerk here, but dude, just read the stories leading up to it. God's been very patient with these people. So the snakes come as a form of his judgment. And then what God gives as a way of escape or a way to take refuge from his judgment is a symbol of the judgment itself. And so paradoxically, they look to this symbol of God's judgment, and that is the thing that's the vehicle of him granting them life again.

The story is very strange. But at the center of it is a symbol that at the same time is a symbol of God's judgment and of God's grace and life that he wants to give to his people. And, you know, so Ben, you asked, could you speak more about God commanding Moses to create a bronze snake? Why does God give Moses an idol for the people to look at? I have no idea. And neither does anybody else. This is just the story is just there. We do know that this snake statue stuck around

in Israel because one of the later kings of Israel ends up digging it out of the storage room. The archives, and then a bunch of Israelites start to give offerings to it, which was the point. And that definitely not the point. So, and then the last thing to tie it up though, it is a strange story, but Jesus paid attention to the story when you read the book of Numbers. In John chapter 3, where he starts talking about how he's going to die so that others can have life. This is in his conversation with Nicodemus, he brings up the story and he says, just as Moses lifted up the

serpent in the wilderness, so he says he will be lifted up so that others might have life. And in the Gospel of John, Jesus is being lifted up, is all pointing forward to his being lifted up and nailed on the cross. So Jesus read the story and he said, oh, that's, that story's about me. Yes, or yes, Jesus reads a story about a strange story, a strange way that God rescues his people because the way that he rescues them is itself a symbol of his judgment on them. And that's precisely how Jesus understood what was happening

on the cross. The God's judgment was coming that also in the same time was his way to save everything. That's right. Yeah, so think of it. It's a different image, but the same idea of the Last Supper of Passover. So he's putting himself in the place of the blood, of the Passover land, my body, and my blood. So his death is going to become a source of life. So Jesus found this strange story of this bronze snake as a helpful image to unpack what is coming death

it was all about. And other prophets would have never done that kind of move, right? Oh, actually that story in the Torah, that was about me. Like, were any other prophets saying that? Well, I mean, there were definitely other people on the scene claiming that they were the messianic king. Jesus is the only Jewish person we know of, whoever mentions the story of the bronze snake as explaining something about themselves and what they're doing.

Yeah, it's very unique. Yeah, it seems like he, the way he views all these scriptures and how he does that with Isaiah and everything, he's just like, yes, it's all about him in an way that people hadn't been thinking about. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Jesus walks into a scene where people have lots of hopes and expectations. Many of them are based on the scriptures. But then Jesus also used a lot of things in the

scriptures to explain himself that the blue people's categories. And this was one of them. Yeah. So I agree with you, Ben. It's a very odd story. But it has a surprising connection to Jesus that he thought the story was significant.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. You guys have good questions. Orelia, you asked a cool question that I think opens up a cool idea about the book of Numbers. Oralia D. You've already done a good question before. Are you guys able to shed some light on the book of the Wars of the Lord mentioned in Numbers chapter 21?

Is this a book that was considered part of the Hebrew canon? So if you're not familiar, this is in a story right here in the travel section, and it's a story of one of the battles Israel fights as it starts to encounter Canaanite people groups, and then there's a line in this story about where they're traveling, and then it says, as it says, in the book of the Wars of the Lord. So the author of the Pentateuch has incorporated material from a source here, the he names, which we don't have fascinating. Yeah, the book of the Wars of the Lord is mentioned in a couple other places.

It's mentioned once in the book of Joshua, off the top of my head. I know Joshua. I think it's mentioned somewhere in one of the books of Samuel, but I forget. So, yes, so here's what it opens up for us, that Moses certainly played a role in the production of the literary production of the Torah. He's mentioned as writing a numerous times in the Torah. However, Moses only is born in the story of the Torah by the time you're already 52 chapters into the Torah. So already we're talking about a whole bunch of material that Moses may have framed or composed, but he's not responsible for it. Which then opens up the question,

that the Torah is much, don't think of the Torah as a document that somebody sat down and wrote. Think of the Torah as a museum exhibit that someone has architected and collected materials from different places and different times and different sources and then arranged it as a meaningful experience for you to walk through. One of the things they had access to was the warful war.

One of them, one of these sources, is called the book of war. And we also know that another source, potentially, was when Moses wrote down all of the cover and the commandments, put it in the arc of the covenant. That was something that we don't exhaust. That's right. But that was a source. Yeah, that's exactly right. And there are numerous other clues within the Torah itself that Moses wasn't the only contributor to the Torah. There's the best example. It's in a place you'd never expected. And the Genesis, there's a genealogy of Esau, Genesis 36. And it says, here's a list of e to my kings. This was before any of the kings of Israel

rained in the land. So, I mean, the genealogy straight up tells you it comes from a time way after Moses. Because they know they have kings. Because it's assuming that it's a time when the kings of Israel have been around for a long time. So when the prophets look back to the Torah,

they viewed Moses as a key author. They didn't view Moses as the only author, though in Daniel chapter 9 and Zechariah chapter 7, they view the Torah as coming from just they say Moses and the prophets. So the book of the Wars of the Lord, it was an archive document that documented Israel's journey through the wilderness. It was never a part of the Bible, but it was a source for some of the material that ended up in some of the books of the Bible. We do want to go into more depth on how the Bible was made. This was a question about Canon, and we could talk for a long time about that.

Yes. But we want to make a series, we want to do something with that. And so I think that would be really helpful. It's been helpful for me and I'm still on the thick of it trying to learn. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much misinformation on Netflix. Or YouTube or whatever about the history of the making of the Bible. And it's really astounding because there is so much public, accessible information about where the Bible came from. And it bothers some people, if your assumption is the Bible dropped out of heaven, then that history is going to, you know, might be traveling to you and force you

to rethink some things, but if you hold the historic orthodoxy about the Bible, that it's a divine and human book, then we can trace much of that human history and it's fascinating, I think. David Carlton, Charlton, the Bible being compiled is messy, and then people are messy. Yeah.

And when God deals with us, he gets involved, and it's not clean. Yes. When he becomes human. Yeah, the story of Jesus, anything but simple or clean. Yeah, that's exactly right. But that's, yeah, that's right. So good question, Aurelia D.

That's number two for Aurelia. She should win a prize. Yeah, that's right. So good question, Aurelia D. That's number two for Aurelia. She should be surprised. Yeah, that's right. It's Ben Brown. Oh, Ben Brown. You had a second question, but it was a good one. And so we're going to break it up. You ask in numbers, what does it mean to bless?

I'm thinking of the priestly blessing in numbers and also the blessing cursing of Bailem, what happens when priests or people bless the people? So that's a great question. That really gets us into a core theme of the entire Torah, which is about God's desire to bless people. Because that idea appears on page 1 of the Bible when God makes humans and appoints them as his image bearers. The first thing God does to humans in the Bible

is bless them. So bless, we've talked about this before. Yeah, I've tried to remember. It's one of these Bible religious words that you can say. We don't use it. Except for people sneeze. Yeah, bless you. Some people say, use it in the passive. Which by the way, you know why. I was so blessed. Oh, that's true. But that's a Christian thing to say.

Right. It's like Christian-ease. Christian, yeah. But what do you say, bless you? Oh, just when you know where that comes from, is when you sneeze, this might be total, every legend. Yes.

But when you sneeze, people thought your soul is escaping. And so you say, bless you to kind of get it back in. So when you say bless you to someone, you're trying to like stuff their soul back into their mouth. Wow. I've never heard that before. Yeah. I might, I didn't just make it up, but it might not be true.

What, uh, in German, there's not long. There's not. In German, you say, g lot of them. They does not. In German you say, guess who tight? Good health. Guess who tight? Good health? Yeah.

Well. Anyway, so blessing. Yeah, I feel blessed. Blessing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, when you say I feel blessed, you just mean, I feel hooked up. I feel like. Yeah, I got to hook up.

Yeah. I think you know what well. That really blessed me when you, like, It made me feel good. Yeah, it made the warm fuzzies warm fuzzies Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So yeah, the yeah the bible's or like our If you're gonna give someone money or something Okay, so then all right now we're more in the ballpark here. Yeah, so there's a 20 hope that's a blessing so God blesses the humans in the form of giving them a world to be responsible for.

And what he tells them is to be fruitful and multiply, you know, to rule the earth and subdue it in harness its resources and make it go somewhere. So blessing has to do with the gift that God gives to people, so it's often connected with abundance. So in the book of Genesis, at the end of the book, Jacob predicts blessings on the tribe of Joseph, and it's like blessings in your barn, in your family, and on your animals. So it's a sign of abundance. Then it becomes a way for you to bless someone to pray a blessing, like in the book of Numbers what the priests do is they pray a blessing. And it's a famous blessing. May the Lord bless you, may he

keep you, may he cause his face to shine upon you, may he show you favor, may he lift his countenance upon you and give you peace. So there, what you are praying for is that God would show this person favor by giving them peace, harmony, and abundance in their lives. So blessing, it's the hookups. It is the hookups. It's the divine hookups.

And then that word then comes into early Christianity and then it becomes one of the main vocabulary items that Paul will use, for example, to describe the hookups that come when you put your trust in devotion in Jesus the Messiah. So his opening line, in Ephesians, is, prays beat to the God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the Messiah. He's making it, he's spiritualizing it. Where blessing was typically

my harvest is awesome. Lots of children. Yeah, yeah. For Paul, it's the presence of Jesus, by means of his spirit, you're being included in the covenant family of God's people, which is multi-ethnic, international, Jesus movement. And good things.

Yeah, totally. Whether it's physical things or spiritual things. But for Paul, it's not just spiritual. Your life gets now rooted and transplanted into a new family, a local community of people who they're going to be your people. And Paul's vision of the church, it's your new family where you've taken care of and you learn how to be a new and different kind of human. It's experiencing God's blessing.

So it's a really profound way of actually telling the story of the whole Bible is blessing and curse. Blessing, loss of blessing, the story of the whole Bible is blessing and curse. Blessing, loss of blessing, and then restoring the blessing. We should probably do a theme video on blessings now that I'm talking a lot about. Right, yeah. Let's make a note. Blessing, theme video. Make a note.

Sometimes this is about how we come up with theme video ideas. We're talking, we're like, yeah, we should add that to the list. And we'll talk about how people sneeze out their soul. Yeah, talk. Let's make a video about that one. Let's see. David Charlton, you're from the UK, regular. There's a well-known story in numbers about Moses

that it's kind of intense. Lots of people usually have questions about it. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. First question. So right here, it's kind of intense. Lots of people usually have questions about it. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense, a first question. So right here, it's in chapter 20, part of the culmination of Israel's rebellion in the wilderness. Moses has a moment of failing.

So essentially what it is is God, the people grumble, their thirsty. The story's right. We even drew it and featured it right here. Their thirsty and they rebel. And eventually what it is is God, the people grumble, their thirsty, the story's right. We even drew it and featured it right here. Their thirsty and they rebel. God tells Moses to speak to a rock that the water would stream out of it

and come to the people. And what Moses says is he doesn't speak to the rock, he strikes it. And then what he says to the people is, you rebels must we, that is Aaron and I, bring water out of this rock for you, and then he hits the rock twice, we're told. And water comes out. And then immediately God says, Moses, you dishonored me, you didn't trust me. You didn't...

You didn't... You didn't... I'll assume into the area. Yeah. You didn't... God says, you didn't trust me. You didn't trust me. You didn't. You didn't. You didn't. God says you didn't trust me. You didn't believe in me. Therefore, you've dishonored me in the eyes of the people. So Moses, you, will suffer the same fate as the Exodus generation and you don't get to enter the Promised Land. And David Charlton, you ask, it seems harsh. My question is about the rebellion of Moses.

His decision to tap the rock rather than speak to it. Is that all there is to it? It seems very harsh. Yeah, because explanation that some people have then is, I think I've heard from you, is, well, we can notice two things. One is God tells them to speak to the rock and it's say he hits it with a staff.

Correct. Secondly, he takes credit for it. I say we, and that's why it's big and bold in our thing. Yeah, if that's it, I mean, he just made a couple of mistakes, right? It's kind of like maybe you should have had a dress rehearsal first so we didn't screw this up. Stakes are pretty high to get in the promised land or not. So yeah, it's a two harsh? But the other question for me is,

is the Bible when the language is crafted, and are they being this specific? Like are we reading too much into these things with legs? Those little differences? Yeah, little differences. Or was that just kind of like? Because he has hit the rock before.

There's a story about in Exodus 16 and 17, where their thirsty and some Moses hit the rock and brought water for them. So he's hit a rock before it. It worked down on it. Yeah, right? Yeah. So that's, yeah.

Well, so one of the languages crafted, and so those little differences in the story, they matter, they're not accidental, that Moses fulfills God's command, but in a way that's not exactly the way that God commanded him to. And this connects to a motif throughout the whole of the Torah, where you have characters, especially in the Abraham stories, where Abraham will do something God asked him to do, but slightly differently. And then it ends up in ruin and disaster.

So he says, leave your father's household, but he takes his nephew with him, lot. And then lot becomes this huge source of headache and a huge pain and causes all these problems in Abraham. It's huge. So my point is that the story's already prepared us for when people don't obey God exactly what he said. Things don't go well. So is that the moral of the story? God tells you to do something. Do it exactly.

I think that's one part of what's going on here. The other part is the fact that the narrator doesn't ever come and say, and here's why Moses was disqualified to go into the promised land. The narrator has chosen to leave an ambiguous, which means that the story leaves you puzzled, and it leaves you much in the position of Moses himself, you know, of wondering why this happened. And the way God evaluates is not by pointing to a specific behavior. He says, you didn't have faith.

You didn't believe in me. And in that little line, you didn't have faith or believe in me. Moses' behavior is mirroring what the Israelites did when they rejected going into the Promised Land, because God's evaluation of the Israelites was, you didn't have faith and you didn't believe in me. So Moses' behavior is being paired with Israel's rebellion, and that's the connection that the story wants to make. So there are lots of stories like this in the Torah, it's just like Baileum, where they raise questions that we have that the story ultimately doesn't answer.

Where's the part where everyone else doesn't get to go into the Promised Land? It's number 13 and 14. So the spies come back, here's all the people. And they're like, let's go back to Egypt. They want to go back to Egypt. And he's like, all right. And to Egypt, they want to go back to Egypt. And he's like, all right. And so your children will go in.

Yep, God disqualifies a whole generation and in numbers 14, God describes they sums it up as an act of honor. Is this supposed to be a parallel in a way? Yeah, the author of the Torah has paralleled Moses' rebellion with Israel's rebellion by that keyword unbelief, or lack of faith. Which connects back, again this is big theme in the Torah because it connects all the way back to the Abraham stories where God brought Abraham out in the middle of the night to look up at the stars and Abraham's asking, like, I don't have any kids, how am I ever going to become a nation?

And God says, yeah, look at the stars. And if you can count them, that's how many kids, children and grandchildren you're gonna have. And we're told that Abraham believed in God. It's a rare word in the Torah, but when it occurs, it's very important. So Abraham had every opportunity not to believe. And by believe we just mean.

He trusted. He trusted God. He's like, okay, that's what you say. He trusted God's promise. That's going to happen. That's right. And so he is contrasted in the Torah with the generation that experienced the Exodus and they don't trust. And Moses, who was the, he was God's instrument in bringing about the Exodus and even he didn't trust. So the Torah is a large scale contrast between Abraham and Moses in Israel and these portraits of faith and lack of faith. So the most of the story is really important.

There is still a mystery as to what exactly went on in his heart that God nailed him for. But the narrator is connecting him to a much larger theme in the Torah about faith and trusting God, which is why Paul the Apostle made such a big deal about the faith, the trusting God theme in the Torah, in his letters to the Romans and Galatians. He was paying attention to this motif. It's cool. What's the kind of a theme? What do I write that one down? Yeah, what's that?

Faith? Trust? Yeah, faith. Faith. Trust. Belief. Faith. We don't really have that one, dude.

We have a problem in English. We have too many words for this. We have faith as the noun. Okay. You can say I have faith. I have faith as the noun. You can say, I have faith. I have faith. Then we have belief. Have you ever heard of spiritual things? You don't say, like, I have faith in this chair. Oh, that's true. I have faith in... No, I guess you say faith in you.

You have faith in people. Which means you're trustworthy. But you're having faith in a relational kind of abstract thing. You don't have faith in the concrete. Faith tends to refer to religious beliefs, or your person of faith. And interrelational faiths. Or character stuff. But you don't have faith going over bridge, the bridge is going to knock on collapse.

You just have trust. Yeah, you trust the bridge. That's what trust is. We use the word trust for that. Yeah, it's complicated. And Hebrew, it's very simple. There's one word at the base of all of our various words. Where is it used to be?

It's one word. Oh, no. Amen. Amen. Amen. It's the root of our word, amen. Really? Yes. Amen. Yes, amen as adjective means trust worthy. Trust worthy. True. Why do you say at the end of the prayer? True. True that. True that. I think that's what it means. All made. True that.

Oh, yeah. I need a theme video on that. OK. Yeah. Andy Gray, you asked a question. I would like a discussion on the difference between being ceremonially unclean and being sinful. What implication or direction can we learn from this today?

So this is related to Leviticus also, but right here in the early part of the book, there's all these things about ritual purity and cleanness and cleanness. Watch the whole of this video. The whole of this video, and it'll help you. Yeah, so basically, you become ritually impure or unclean if you're in Israelite.

So you're just a handful of things. It's either contact with dead bodies, disease, or reproductive fluids. So these are, this is the symbolic set of customs in Israel, where if you touch one of these, you can't go into God's presence. That's what it means to be unclean. It doesn't mean that you're sinful and horrible person. It means you're marked with the symbols of death. And so you can't have those symbols connected to you and go into the presence of

the author of all life. That's wrong to cross that boundary line, but being richly in pure is not inherently simple. I think maybe I heard you say, well, it's kind of like, maybe this is you, I don't remember. But it's like, if you're going to meet the President of the United States, you might take a bath first. Yeah, that's a good point. Yes. Or you would wear like your gardening clothes. Or the clothes that are like your project work clothes, you wouldn't wear those.

You would wear like something holy, which is like unique. So yeah, something like that. So, ritual impurity was a whole set of practices that the Israelites were to practice. But, and you're gonna touch dead people, which is gonna happen. You're gonna do your gonna all these things and it doesn't mean you do something wrong.

It means you got chill out for a while and not go to the temple. Correct. So the only carryover we see of that into the new testament is the language of purity gets then put as a map onto moral, what we call moral purity. And so that's why you'll find pure or impure, clean or unclean language, not in the New Testament in Jesus or Paul, a tie connected to matters of like sex and what you do with your money and greed and so on. And they'll use the words impurity to describe this.

So there, they are using this language, mapping it onto, there are certain ways of behaving as a human where you are associating yourself with death and destruction and that's not good. So I think so it's the same way that you would touch this dead body, be it clean, can't go to the temple. Now he's using that as a structure to say,

cool, now that you understand that, because you've been doing that for a while, you get that, we don't get that, but they got that. Now in the same way, realize that when you are sexually and pure, you are now in a space. You shouldn't be like, yeah that's right, if you're sleeping around, if you're saying you're following Jesus and you're sleeping around, Paul would say that's there's just so much of a problem going on. That's right, yeah you're acting

impure and you are acting unclean. You're associating yourself with a death-dealing, destructive behavior. And Jesus died to clean you from that. I think what's tough is he's using... He is, is it? Paul, this is the clean, unclean language about morality. Yes. Ethical, the practice that we're not familiar with,

that's right. That's really hard for us to comprehend. As a stage to talk about something we do understand and it's just confusing. That's why we associate being impure with sinful because that's the way Paul uses the language. I see. That's not the way the language is used in Leviticus and numbers.

Isn't that interesting? Okay, I think I get it. Alright, alright guys, have a great week. Thanks for supporting the Bio Project. You guys are awesome. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project. We're non-profit studio in Portland, Oregon, and we have lots of free resources on our website,

thebibelproject.com. Thanks for being a part of this with us. you you