Shelach-Lekha ('Send on your behalf')

The invasion of the Promised Land was not in question but God commanded Moses to delegate a leader from each of the tribes to go reconnoitre. And in contractual style their names were listed, followed by a concise summary of the job description Moses gave them, concluding with an exhortation to be bold enough to bring back some produce.

This was obviously no Sunday afternoon walk in the park that they were being sent on, but an incursion through enemy territory, requiring bravery. But it was upon God’s direction!

The Words of the Report

Forty days later these leaders came back with samples of produce and a spokesman made the report. See how the meaning of this report was subverted by the inclusion of a few small, apparently inconsequential words so as to add the speaker’s own agenda and lead the hearers into a rebellious course of action:

• The land indeed / certainly does flow with milk and honey (Num 13:27).
• However / Nevertheless the people living in the land are fierce…very large fortified cities (Num 13:28).
• Moreover there are these especially fierce peoples strategically located (Num 13:29).

Without those words of indeed / certainly, however / nevertheless and moreover, the report, whilst still daunting, could have led to a strategy of attack being formulated. But the majority of the tribal leaders wanted to add something they hadn’t been asked for: their own agenda of how the report should be acted upon. Without overtly giving an unsolicited opinion, they, as leaders of each tribe, had made it evident that they considered the entire venture a bad idea.

God’s Response

This left Caleb (and presumably Joshua) back-footed about something that was not even meant to be up for discussion. So Caleb’s own words, instead of being a rousing encouragement, became a plea for Israel to go up and gain possession because, of course, they would be victorious. But the damage of the words had already started to destroy the nation’s newly found trust in God, the rest of the spies forcing their advantage: “…We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are….We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them” (Num 13:31-33).

In chapter 14, godless common sense degenerated into fear and was about to result in the murder of Moses when God intervened. God judged that those culpable would be shut off from the Promised Land and die in the desert while the rest (mainly the younger generation) waited for forty years. Hebrews 3:12-19 (also Psalm 95:7-11) tells us clearly what we need to learn from this account:

“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’ Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.”

The Importance of Discernment

We are living in times and a society where the words spoken in our various Christian denominations, instead of shouting out a clear message from God, are filled with apathy, fear and confusion to the extent that it gets harder and harder to discern God’s truth through them. Because of this we must seek and listen all the more intently in order to discern what is of God and what is deception.

Forty years later Joshua sent out two spies across the Jordan to reconnoitre the Promised Land. They nearly got captured in Jericho and had to run the gauntlet. But they got back and reported to Joshua everything, concluding that “The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands…” (Josh 2:24). This generation had indeed learned a hard lesson.

Though humanly speaking we might be weak and inconsequential, let us discern astutely what people tell us, knowing that we are children of our Father, God of Heaven’s armies. And if he says it will be, it will be!!!

Author: John Quinlan