In Numbers 11:18-20, Yahweh’s response to the Israelites complaining about no meat to eat, and wailing “Why did we ever leave Egypt?” – was to swamp them with so much meat it would “come out of their nostrils” to the point they’d “loathe it.” Why? Because that was the consequence he inflicted on them for “rejecting” him (20).
It wasn’t the first time this happened too. Rejecting Yahweh had become a habit, and so were the consequences, starting back in Exodus 32 when the Israelites turned away from the real power that had saved them to bowing down to their own crafted idol instead (8). It was a direct slam against Yahweh himself, and he responded by “striking the people with a plague” (35).
From the very start of their relationship with Yahweh, then, they knew that “rejecting him has consequences.” But they also knew why Yahweh had set it up this way back in Exodus 20:20, when Moses, in response to Yahweh’s terrifying scene at Mount Sinai (18), told the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”
Fear of consequences, then, wasn’t meant to be negative. True, it was a scary thing knowing consequences would happen, but only as a helpful reminder and incentive to “listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your good and do what is right in his eyes,” Exodus 15:26, because (same verse), that way nothing harmful would happen to them and instead they’d have Yahweh “healing” them.
But whenever things were not to the liking of the Israelites their first reaction was to turn against Moses and Yahweh, resulting in more severe consequences. It was a rotten way to live, but for some reason the Israelites never got the point of it.
In contrast to that, when Moses complained bitterly for how Yahweh was treating him in Numbers 11:10-15, the consequence he got was “healing,” not only in his attitude but the situation too. Why the difference? Because Moses wasn’t rejecting Yahweh; he only wanted to know if he’d “displeased” him in some way (11).
The difference, then, was in their reaction to suffering. For Israel it was reason to arrogantly reject Yahweh; for Moses, the humble desire to understand him. In every situation they came up against, then, which would it be? Because that was “The test”….(next blog)
