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Each day this month we’re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible – exploring what we can learn from chapter one / verse one of various Old and New Testament books.
“These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness east of the Jordan—that is, in the Arabah—opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab.”
Deuteronomy is the fascinating book with the funny name.
The Greek words deuteros (“second”) and nomos (“law”), when put together, signify that this is the second reporting of the laws of Moses – the ones that are scattered throughout the earlier books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.
As we noted yesterday, Jewish teachers identify this book as Devarim, or “The Words.” The first verse of the first chapter tells us that Moses, who is rapidly approaching the end of his life, is about to go over the words of God’s regulations and commandments one last time.
The first verse includes eight geographic locaters – as if the author wants us to know exactly where Moses is going to be standing when he delivers his valedictory address. He is poised on the banks of the Jordan River – the eastern threshold of the Promised Land.
What should really get our attention is the next verse: “It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road” (Deuteronomy 1:2).
What’s going on here? Why are we suddenly talking about another piece of real estate at a different part of the perimeter of “the land of milk and honey?”
Deuteronomy begins with a brutal reminder: Moses is implementing Plan B. The east side of the Jordan River is not where God originally intended the people to enter the region now known as Palestine. They were to come in from the south, near the village of Kadesh Barnea. That had been Plan A.
But the people of Israel had flunked Plan A.
It takes only 11 days to walk from Horeb (that is, Mt. Sinai) to the southern threshold of the Promised Land. In less than two weeks, the Israelites should have gone from receiving the Ten Commandments and the other laws of the Torah and found themselves knocking on the door of the new world that God had promised Abraham centuries earlier.
But look at Deuteronomy 1:3: “In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him concerning them.”
An 11-day trip had tragically turned into 40 years.
How in the world did that happen? The story is told in two places – in the rest of the first chapter of Deuteronomy and in Numbers 13 and 14.
Moses and the people – having escaped the bondage of pharaoh and having camped out for the better part of a year in the vicinity of Mt. Sinai – have arrived at Kadesh Barnea. They choose 12 spies who will spend 40 days exploring the Promised Land. What do they find? They return with a cluster of grapes so big that it takes two of them to carry it on a pole.
But not everything in the land turns out to be sunshine and rainbows. They report, “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But [and at this point you’ve just got to believe that Moses is thinking, “Oh please, don’t say but…”] the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.”
Public morale promptly implodes.
One of the spies, however, a man named Caleb, decides to present a different perspective. In one of the great can-do moments of the Bible, he turns to the crowd and shouts, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it!”
Joshua, another of the spies, enthusiastically sides with Caleb. But the other 10 press the panic button. The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size… We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.’”
The twelve spies agree on the same basic data concerning the Promised Land. It is a wonderful place. But it is also a supremely challenging place.
So the issue becomes: What should be done with this data?
Here the spies cleave into two groups. Ten of the spies sign their names to a scandalously negative majority report. The other two present an upbeat minority report.
The ten spies gasp, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes!” Joshua and Caleb don’t deny that perception. Their response is simply, “God’s grasshoppers reporting for duty…sir!” In their minds, the only size that matters here is the size of God.
Day by day, we also face a future that is simultaneously wonderful and supremely challenging.
What we choose to do with the data that we experience will depend on which path we choose to follow: Trust or Fear.
Tragically, in the tents of the Israelites, Fear rules.
Beginning in Numbers 14:1 they wail, “‘If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this desert! Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?’ And they said to each other, ‘We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.’”
This is what is known as a bankrupt definition of leadership. “Let’s choose a leader and go backwards.”
For the Israelites, slavery to what they have always known is preferable to trusting God concerning the unknown. They have fallen under the enchantment of personal security, beguiled by the lie that safety is the most important concern in their lives. Therefore they refuse to trust God.
The consequences are disastrous. God declares that the people must now go back into the wilderness, where they will linger for 40 years – one year for every day the spies were in the land. They won’t have another shot at the Promised Land until all of the adults of that generation (except for Joshua and Caleb) have died.
The opening verse of the Bible’s fifth book thus turns out to be a stark and timeless reminder:
Don’t waste 40 years of your life because you’re flunking an 11-day assignment.
One way or another, we all have one foot back in Egypt and another foot in the Promised Land.
What must we do?
Be like Caleb. Decide to obey God. Instead of surrendering to Fear, choose Trust.
It is better to face giants while leaning on God than to squander our lives trying to ensure a safety that never really existed in the first place.
That’s one of the enduring lessons from the fascinating book with the funny name.