The Whole Community Broke Out With Loud Cries

"YAHWEH then spoke to Moses, saying, 'Send men to explore the land of Canaan that I AM giving to the Israelites; send one man from each of the ancestral tribes, all of them leaders.'

After forty days of exploration, they returned.  They went and met Moses, Aaron and the whole community of Israelites in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh.  They gave an account to them and the whole community and showed them the fruit of this land.  And they said,

'We entered the land where you sent us, truly a land flowing with milk and honey and here is the fruit.  But how strong are the people who inhabit the land!  The cities are fortified with walls and bars, and we even saw there descendants of the Anakites.  Amalekites live in the region of the Negeb; Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; the Canaanites are by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.'

Caleb then quieted the people who rose up against Moses and said, 'We should go up and take over the land, for we shall surely overcome it.'  But the men who had gone up with him said, 'We cannot advance against these people for they are stronger than we are.'

And they spread an unfavorable report about the land that they had explored, saying to the Israelites, 'The land we went through to explore is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people we saw there are men of great size.  We even saw giants [these giants were the Anakites].  We felt like grasshoppers before them, and to them we must have seemed the same.'

Then all the community broke out in loud cries and wept during the night.

Then YAHWEH spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, 'How long will this wicked community grumble against ME?'  I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel against ME.  Say to them: As truly as I live, it is YAHWEH who speaks, I will do to you what you have said in MY hearing.  All of you of twenty years or more, numbered in the census, who grumbled against ME, your corpses will fall in the desert.

According to the number of days spent in exploring the land--forty days, for every day a year--for forty years you shall bear the guilt of your sins and you shall know what it is to oppose ME.  I, YAHWEH, have spoken.  Surely this is what I will do to this wicked community that has conspired against ME.  In this wilderness they shall be destroyed and this is where they shall die.'" - Numbers 13:1-2, 25-14:1, 26-29, 34-35 

(Here, Scripture describes one of the great sins of Israel, as in Exodus 32.  It would not have been difficult for Israel to believe in YAHWEH if HE had not required that they conquer the land, a challenge which frightened them.  In the same way today, many Christians filled with spiritual favor get scared when the church asks them to commit themselves to the task of justice and reconciliation in every area of the world.

We can recall experiences very similar to this rebellion.

Fear is a bad adviser; it turns cowards into violent people.

Mediocre people kill the prophets either to preserve their peace, or to return "to the slavery of Egypt."

Yet, GOD comes to the rescue of the person who confronts the crowds for the sake of GOD. 

How long will this people spurn ME.  The fear of acting is an insult to GOD.  These words are also addressed to all those who today, faced with the wounds of our society, say: nothing can be done.

GOD forgives, but this does not exempt people from having to pay the price of their errors.  The rebellion of Kadesh and the following defeat are given as the reason for the long time spent by the Hebrews in the desert.  They did, in fact, spend a fairly long time, forty years, not far from Kadesh as if prevented from entering the land of Canaan.  The word is harsh: all who have refused to take part in the conquest will die at the gate of the Promised Land.)

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