Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22

Devarim (‘The words’)

This week’s Torah portion, the start of the Book of Deuteronomy, is a recounting by Moses of the previous 40 years, including an 11-day journey that, due to Israel’s rebellion, took them 38 years (Deut 1:2).

Having constructed the tabernacle and set up a practical government system at Mount Sinai / Horeb, Israel was instructed by God to “Go, take possession of the Promised Land” (Deut 1:6-8). They travelled to Kadesh Barnea (Deut 1:19) on the southern edge of the Promised Land, the ‘jumping off’ place from which the Israelites were to go up to take possession of Canaan.

Kadesh Barnea

This place already had a history: Genesis 14:7 tells us that Kadesh Barnea was in the territory of the Amalekites and Amorites, as noted in the account of the battle of the kings when Abram victoriously saved Lot and was blessed by Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem. It was close to where Abraham eventually settled (Gen 20:1).

But, instead of taking inspiration from their father Abram’s miraculous victory, marching in as Moses instructed, Israel’s leaders, using the excuse of caution, gained agreement for spies to reconnoitre first. The result (recorded in Numbers 13, also Deuteronomy 1) was disastrous, destroying the people’s tentative trust in God and leading to God’s judgment that He would not go up with them but wait until that entire generation of fighting men had died (excepting Joshua and Caleb).

Stuck in a Rut

I have in my work observed people use Health & Safety risk assessments as a tool to destroy, for whatever reason, an inspirational project. Such assessments are all very well in their place but we ought not to let them confuse good and right decisions, especially when God has said “Go”! To obey is to follow a command immediately, without questioning, risking an unknown outcome. Isn’t God able to make his own risk assessments?

So, instead of being the springboard it should have been, Kadesh Barnea became a rut: a place of disaster, disappointment and disobedience from which God would not lead Israel out for a long time (Deut 1:46). It was also the place where:

• Rebellious Israel tried on their own to go up into the Promised Land, but were crushed and forced back by the Amorites (Deut 1:44-46)
• Miriam died and was buried (Num 20:1)
• Israel quarrelled, with the result that Moses and Aaron were also excluded from the Promised Land (Num 20:2)
• Moses’ request of the King of Edom (descendant of Israel’s brother Esau) to pass through his land was rejected (Num 20:14)

Kadesh Barnea became the place that I think everyone would have wanted to leave, but no-one was able to. It might have been the place of which David the psalmist was thinking in Psalm 40 when he wrote about the miry pit and slimy clay, an ancient refugee camp.

Fear and Faith

I have been told that Smith Wigglesworth once said, “Fear looks, faith jumps!” So let us take careful heed of Psalm 95, expanded upon in Hebrews 3:15-4:1: “Today, if you hear God’s voice, don’t harden your hearts, as you did in the Bitter Quarrel”.

These were the people that God had redeemed from Egypt, but they were unable to enter the Promised Land because of lack of trust. Therefore, let us fear rightly, trembling at the possibility that even though we have been redeemed, through not trusting we could miss the gift of entering God’s rest, instead finding ourselves in Kadesh Barnea.

Author: John Quinlan