Shelach continued

Yes, God is forgiving and merciful. Yet, He does not relent of all punishment.

God speaks to Moses and Aaron saying, How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites. So tell them, 'As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very things I heard you say: In this desert your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me.

Everybody except Caleb and Joshua will die in the wilderness.

In the same passage that speaks of God's great mercy, God also says that he punishes children for the sins of the fathers even to the third and fourth generation. In an ironic twist, it is not the children who are punished for their fathers' sins. The present generation does not get to see the land. But the children will be brought in to enjoy the land that their fathers rejected. Still, the children will have to wait forty years, suffering for their fathers' unfaithfulness. Why forty years? A year for each day spent scouting the land.

And then God sent a plague and the ten men who gave an evil report about the land died as a result.

Moses reported all that the Lord had spoken to the Israelites and they mourned bitterly. And early next morning they went up ready to go into the land.

Too little, too late. God's decree, once given, cannot be revoked. Isaiah 55:11. Faced with the prospect of suffering the consequences for their actions, the people attempt to change God's mind. But they are not Moses. And they have shown by their behavior that their hearts are hard and the necks are stiff. Like Pharaoh, they plead for God's mercy but revert back to their evil ways once mercy is shown to them.

Moses tries to warn them not to invade the land. God is not with them. The ark does not go out. Moses does not leave his tent. But the people refuse to listen and lead an attack that ends in disaster.


To be continued...