The water for purification (yawn!) had no practical value, only ceremonial, and only for one purpose – for purification after one had contact with, even as superficial as being in the presence of, a dead person. This required a lot of effort: the preparation of the ashes, involving several people, each of whom had to wash themselves and their clothes after performing their duties (think about washing those big woolen robes by hand – that was no easy task!), seems like a ridiculous amount of work for ceremonial cleansing from simple contact with death, an experience that would occur so frequently in a population the size of Israel. Why? The requirement speaks to me of the awfulness of death. Another indication of the awfulness is the amount of time involved to make one clean after contacting or even being in the same tent as a human corpse: in case you missed it, that was seven days. The water for purification had to be sprinkled twice in that time period, once at the halfway point, and once at the end; and failure to do so resulted in that person being excluded from community worship. This is serious business! If they were excluded from the assembly, they were excluded from the proper worship of those holy days requiring assembly – and that required expulsion from the community.
Let us recognize that death is an awful thing. Even though God imposed it as a consequence of sin, He hates it. We see it as a natural part of life, but it isn’t God’s plan for His creation. Think about it – He created with excellence, repeatedly evaluating His creations as good. How offensive, then, it must be to Him to see that creation deteriorate with age, and die. Much more so when it is a person in whom He invests much because He seeks relationship with him. When we suffer the pain of a dear one’s death, or when we face a scary diagnosis, we realize that death is not natural, but horrible. I appreciate that God here elevates its unique awfulness with these unique and inconvenient requirements. Does that appraisal offer balm for your soul?
The people still had not learned to ask God for what they needed, when He was there for the very purpose of providing for them! Instead, they grumbled – again – , shifted blame for their dead-ending in the wilderness, and looked back longingly to the land of their enslavement. Is God wanting to use them as a mirror for you today? “Search me, O God,” and don’t let me be like them! Transform me so that I am not like them.
Moses’ sin of striking the rock instead of speaking to it seems mild compared to the peoples’ sin, especially since God seems rather patient with the people. Add to that the mitigating factors of Moses’ age, the amount of times he had been down this same road with the griping Israelites, his weariness of wilderness living, God’s command to take the rod, and the fact that the rod had been used in the past and he was probably operating out of habit. So why the harsh punishment for Moses and Aaron?
There may be more reasons than are evident to us, but let us learn from what evidence we do have. They as leaders had failed to obey, had failed to believe God, and had failed to treat God as holy in the sight of the people. Leaders are held to a higher standard.
But look at what their words would have implied to the people: that they were the ones who brought water from the rock. Their job as leaders was to point people to God; instead they were elevating themselves. Leadership is a serious responsibility. We should accept that responsibility with care. We must be praying for our leaders, that they wouldn’t have a Moses moment in the stress of their duties. We had better not be pushing them over the edge as the people did to Moses!
Today’s reading finds the Israelites on the move toward the Promised Land. Hopefully they have used their time in the wilderness to prepare for taking the land. The Canaanite king’s attack would have almost been a blessing as a thrust into war, a victory, and a first taste of battle and what God intended them to do in order to displace the inhabitants of the land. Can we see some of our skirmishes with the enemy in the same light, as actions that incite us to battle, giving God a chance to gain us victory?
Why would God give Moses instruction to raise up a bronze serpent on a pole as the antidote to the serpents’ fatal poison? God had never done anything like that before, and didn’t again. Sometimes He does startlingly unexpected things; we will never have Him figured out! I believe that His mercy to these undeserving people was in large part a lesson to us of Messiah. Understanding fallen human nature, God knows that simple faith is difficult for us to grasp, and so He gave us this object lesson. These ungrateful and perpetually grumbling people did not deserve the relief from punishment; God, however, mercifully gave it. They didn’t have to do anything elaborate or painful to earn the salvation; they simply had to look. Looking on the serpent was almost ridiculous, and ridiculously simple, given the crisis they were suffering. To look was to exercise faith in the salvation God had given. Those who looked, lived. So it is with our salvation: we do nothing to earn it. It is given by God, and we simply go to Him for our salvation.