The leaders of the opposition to Moses hated his authority and twisted his words as they spat back at the leader of Israel:

Isn’t it enough that you brought us up out of a land of milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness? And now you also want to lord it over us! Moreover, you haven’t brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey or given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards.

Wait—Egypt, the land of their slavery—now referred to as a land of milk and honey? Certainly a twist. Also, these men quickly forgot their sin which barred them from the real land of milk and honey. In their rebellion they blamed Moses for all their problems.

Although the works of the Lord shone all around them (a pillar of fire and cloud led the nation), these men fixated on milk and honey. They dreamed of filling their bellies and delighting their eyes. If Moses failed to deliver, then Moses needed to go. Just below the surface, they felt the same about the God of Israel.

How much do I miss when I focus on the things I hope for from the Lord, rather than on the Lord himself? What if I lift my head and ask the Lord to show me the backstory? What might I see for the first time?

The Lord is not a vending machine, as much as I treat him as such. Pray my prayer, get what I want. When the machine fails to deliver, I rock it, slap it, give it a kick.

Which is what these men did to Moses, right in front of God and everybody. Oops!—this vending machine hit back. Swallowed alive into the realm of the dead, no one present soon forgot the difference between milk and honey and the giver of milk and honey.

Numbers 16 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Sandi Benedicta