Numbers 11-15

Evangelical Heritage Version

Fire From the Lord

11 The people were complaining about their hardships so that the Lord heard it. When the Lord heard it, his anger burned. So the Lord’s fire burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. ² The people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord. So the fire died down. ³ They named that place Taberah,^[a] because the Lord’s fire burned among them.

Complaints About the Food

⁴ The foreign rabble who were among the Israelites were overcome by their craving. The Israelites also wept once again and said, “Who is going to give us meat to eat? ⁵ We remember the fish we ate in Egypt free of charge, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. ⁶ But now our lives are wasting away.^[b] We have nothing at all to look at except this manna.”

⁷ The manna was like coriander seed, and it looked like resin.^{[c] 8} The people went around and gathered it up. They would grind it in hand mills or crush it in a mortar. They would boil it in pots or make it into loaves. It tasted like a cake made with oil. ⁹ When dew fell on the camp during the night, the manna fell along with it.

¹⁰ Moses heard people from all the clans weeping, each one at the entrance to his own tent. At the same time, the Lord’s anger burned fiercely, and Moses was displeased.^{[d] 11} Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your eyes? Why do you put the burden of all these people on me? ¹² Did I conceive all these people by myself? Am I the one who gave birth to them so that you tell me to carry them in my arms to the land which you swore to their fathers, just as a woman who is nursing carries a baby? ¹³ Where is there meat for me to give to all these people? Listen, they are weeping to me and saying, ‘Give us meat so that we can eat.’ ¹⁴ I am not able to carry all these people by myself, because that is too much for me. ¹⁵ If you are going to treat me this way, please kill me right now. If I have found favor in your eyes, do not let me see my own ruin.”

Elders Appointed to Assist Moses

¹⁶ So the Lord said to Moses, “Gather seventy men from the elders of Israel for me, men whom you know to be elders and officers for the people. Take them to the Tent of Meeting and make them stand there with you. ¹⁷ I will come down and talk with you there. I will take from the Spirit that is on you and will put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it by yourself.

¹⁸ “Say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves to be ready for tomorrow. You will eat meat because you have wept and the Lord has heard you say, “Who will give us meat to eat? Yes, things were good for us in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat. ¹⁹ You will eat not just for one day, for two days, for five days, for ten days, not even just for twenty days, ²⁰ but for a whole month, until meat comes out of your nostrils, and you begin to loathe it. This will happen because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and you have wept in his presence, saying, “Why did we come out of Egypt?”’”

²¹ Moses said, “I am in the middle of a people with six hundred thousand foot soldiers, and now you say, ‘I will give them meat, and they will eat for a whole month.’ ²² If flocks and herds were slaughtered for them, would that be enough for them? If all the fish of the sea were caught for them, would that be enough for them?”

²³ The Lord said to Moses, “Is the arm of the Lord too short? Now you will see whether what I have said to you will happen or not.”

²⁴ Moses went out and told the people the Lord’s words. He gathered seventy men from the elders of the people and had them stand all around the tent. ²⁵ The Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him. He took from the Spirit that was on Moses and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not do it again.^[e]

²⁶ Two men, however, remained in the camp. The name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other was Medad. They were listed among the elders, but they had not gone out to the tent. The Spirit rested on them, and they prophesied back in the camp. ²⁷ A young man ran and reported this to Moses. He said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!”

²⁸ Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide from his youth, answered, “My lord Moses, stop them!”

²⁹ Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? If only all of the Lord’s people were prophets so that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” ³⁰ Then Moses returned to the camp along with the elders of Israel.

Quail and a Plague From the Lord

³¹ A wind sent out from the Lord brought quail in from the sea. The wind scattered them throughout the camp (and about a day’s journey in any direction around the camp) about three feet deep^[f] on the ground. ³² All that day, all that night, and all the next day, the people got up and gathered the quail. No one gathered fewer than sixty bushels.^[g] They spread them out around the camp. ³³ But while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the Lord’s anger burned against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very severe plague. ³⁴ They named that place Kibroth Hatta’avah,^[h] because there they buried the people who were overcome by their craving.

³⁵ From Kibroth Hatta’avah the people traveled to Hazeroth, and they stayed at Hazeroth.

Miriam and Aaron Oppose Moses

12 Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married (for he had married a Cushite woman). ² They said, “Has the Lord really spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” The Lord heard this.

³ (Now the man Moses was very humble, more humble^[i] than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

⁴ Right then the Lord spoke suddenly to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “You three come out to the Tent of Meeting!”

The three of them came out. ⁵ The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance to the tent. He called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. ⁶ He said, “Now listen to my words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, will make myself known to him in a vision. In a dream I will speak with him. ⁷ Not so, however, with my servant Moses. He is faithful in my whole household. ⁸ With him I speak face-to-face,^[j] clearly, and not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?” ⁹ The Lord’s anger burned against them, and he left.

¹⁰ The cloud went up from above the tent, and immediately Miriam was leprous,^[k] as white as snow. Aaron turned to Miriam and saw that she was leprous.

¹¹ Aaron said to Moses, “My lord, please do not hold this sin against us. We have acted foolishly. We have sinned. ¹² Please do not let her be like a stillborn infant that comes out of its mother’s womb^[l] with its flesh half-eaten away.”

¹³ Moses cried out to the Lord, “God, please heal her, please!”

¹⁴ The Lord said to Moses, “If her father had merely spit in her face, would she not be disgraced for seven days? Have her confined outside of the camp for seven days, and after that she can be brought back in.”

¹⁵ Miriam was confined outside of the camp for seven days, and the people did not set out until Miriam was brought back in. ¹⁶ Afterward the people set out from Hazeroth and camped in the Wilderness of Paran.

Scouting Canaan

13 The Lord spoke to Moses: ² “Send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I myself am giving to the Israelites. You are to send one man from each ancestral tribe, each one a tribal chief among the people of Israel.”

³ Moses sent them from the Wilderness of Paran according to the Lord’s command. All of these men were heads of the Israelites. ⁴ These were their names:

¹⁶ These were the names of the men whom Moses sent to scout the land. Moses renamed Hoshea son of Nun “Joshua.”^[m]

¹⁷ Moses sent them to scout the land of Canaan and said to them, “Go up this way through the Negev^[n] and go up into the hill country.^{[o] 18} See what the land is like. See if the people who live in the land are strong or weak. See if they are few or many. ¹⁹ See if the land that they live in is good or bad. See what kind of cities they live in. See if the cities are camps or fortified places. ²⁰ See what the land is like. See if the land is fertile or poor. See if there are trees in the land or not. Be courageous and bring back some of the fruit of the land.” This happened at the season of the first ripe grapes.

²¹ So they went up and scouted the land from the Wilderness of Zin to Rehob, toward Lebo Hamath. ²² They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron. Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were there. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) ²³ The scouts came to the Valley of Eshcol, and there they cut down a branch with one cluster of grapes. They carried it on a pole between two men, along with some pomegranates and figs. ²⁴ They named that place the Valley of Eshcol,^[p] because of the cluster which the Israelites had cut down from there. ²⁵ At the end of forty days, they returned from scouting the land.

The Report About Canaan

²⁶ They came back to Moses, Aaron, and the entire community of the Israelites at Kadesh in the Wilderness of Paran. They brought back a report to them and to the entire community. They showed them some of the fruit of the land. ²⁷ They reported to him and said, “We went to the land where you sent us. It really does flow with milk and honey, and here is its fruit. ²⁸ However, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. We also saw the descendants of Anak there. ²⁹ The Amalekites are living in the land of the Negev. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites are living in the hill country. The Canaanites are living by the sea and along the Jordan.”

³⁰ Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should go up now and take possession of it, because we can certainly conquer it!”

³¹ But the men who had gone up with Caleb said, “We are not able to go up against the people, because they are stronger than we are.” ³² So they spread a negative report to the Israelites about the land that they had scouted. They said, “The land that we explored and scouted is a land that eats up its inhabitants. All the people we saw in the land were huge. ³³ We saw there the Nephilim^[q] (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). In our own eyes we seemed like grasshoppers. We seemed like grasshoppers in their eyes too.”

The People Rebel

14 The entire community raised a loud cry. The people wept that night. ² All of the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The entire community said to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt! If only we had died in this wilderness! ³ Why is the Lord bringing us to this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our children will be taken as captives! Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?” ⁴ So they said to one another, “Let’s put someone in charge and return to Egypt.”

⁵ Then Moses and Aaron fell facedown before the entire assembly of the Israelite community.

⁶ Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, two of those who had scouted the land, tore their clothes. ⁷ They spoke to the entire Israelite community, “The land that we explored and scouted is a very good land. ⁸ If the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that is flowing with milk and honey. ⁹ Only do not revolt against the Lord. Do not fear the people of the land, for we will eat them up.^[r] Their protection is taken away from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”

¹⁰ Still the entire community threatened to stone them to death. The Glory of the Lord appeared to all the Israelites over the Tent of Meeting. ¹¹ The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? ¹² I will strike them with a plague and disown them. Then I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they are.”

Moses Intercedes for Israel

¹³ Moses said to the Lord, “The Egyptians will hear it, since by your own power you brought these people up from the midst of the Egyptians. ¹⁴ They will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have heard that you, the Lord, are in the midst of this people. You, the Lord, are seen face-to-face.^[s] Your cloud stands over them. You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. ¹⁵ If you killed these people, leaving no one, then the nations which have heard about your fame will say, ¹⁶ ‘Because the Lord was not able to bring these people into the land which he swore to them, he has slaughtered them in the wilderness.’ ¹⁷ Now please let the power of the Lord be great, just as you have said, ¹⁸ ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in mercy, forgiving guilt and rebellion. He certainly does not leave the guilty unpunished, following up on the guilt of the fathers with the children unto the third and the fourth generation.’ ¹⁹ According to your great mercy, please pardon the guilt of these people, just as you have forgiven these people from Egypt until now.”

God Decrees Forty Years of Wandering

²⁰ The Lord said, “I have pardoned them just as you have said. ²¹ But as surely as I live, and as surely as the entire earth is filled with the glory of the Lord, ²² not one of the men who has seen my glory and my signs, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who has tested me these ten times and has not listened to my voice— ²³ I promise that none of them will see the land which I swore to their fathers. None of those who treated me with contempt will see it. ²⁴ But because my servant Caleb had a different spirit and has followed me completely, I will bring him into the land to which he traveled. His descendants will possess it. ²⁵ Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys and lowlands, tomorrow you are to turn back and set out into the wilderness along the route to the Red Sea.”

²⁶ The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, ²⁷ “How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the Israelites’ constant grumblings against me. ²⁸ Tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you just as I have heard you say. ²⁹ In this wilderness your corpses will fall. All of you who were registered in the census, every one of you twenty years old and up who have grumbled against me, ³⁰ I swear that none of you will go into the land where I promised to settle you, except for Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. ³¹ But your children, whom you said would become plunder, I will bring in, and they will experience the land which you have rejected. ³² But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. ³³ Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years. They will have to endure your prostitution until your corpses perish in the wilderness. ³⁴ You will bear the consequences of your guilt for forty years, based on the number of days that you scouted the land, forty days, one year for every day. You will experience my opposition.’ ³⁵ I, the Lord, have spoken. I swear that I will do this to this entire wicked community, who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness they will perish. There they will die.”

³⁶ The men whom Moses had sent to scout the land, who returned and made the entire community grumble against him by giving a negative report about the land— ³⁷ those men who brought the wicked, negative report about the land—died by the plague before the Lord. ³⁸ Of those men who had gone to scout the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh remained alive.

Israel Defeated in Battle

³⁹ Moses told these things to all the Israelites, and the people mourned bitterly. ⁴⁰ They got up early in the morning and went up to the heights of the hill country. They said, “We are ready. We will go up to the place which the Lord spoke about. We admit we have sinned.”

⁴¹ Moses said, “What is this? Why are you going against the Lord’s command? This will not succeed. ⁴² Do not go up, because the Lord is not among you. You will be struck down before your enemies, ⁴³ because the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there to oppose you. You will fall by the sword because you turned away from following the Lord. Therefore the Lord will not be with you.”

⁴⁴ But they dared to go up to the heights of the hill country. Nevertheless, the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and Moses did not leave the camp. ⁴⁵ Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites, who lived in that hill country, came down, attacked them, and beat them down all the way to Hormah.

Supplementary Offerings

15 The Lord told Moses ² to speak to the Israelites and tell them this:

When you come into the land where you will live, the land which I am giving to you, ³ and you make an offering by fire^[t] to the Lord from the herd or the flock, to make a pleasing aroma to the Lord (whether it is a burnt offering or a sacrifice, whether it is to fulfill a vow or as a voluntary offering or at your appointed festivals), ⁴ the person who presents his offering is to present to the Lord two quarts^[u] of fine flour mixed with a quart^[v] of oil as a grain offering. ⁵ For each lamb, for the burnt offering or the sacrifice, you are to supply a quart of wine as the drink offering.

⁶ With a ram you are to supply four quarts^[w] of fine flour mixed with a quart and a half^[x] of oil as a grain offering, ⁷ and you will also present a quart of wine as the drink offering, a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

⁸ If you are offering a young bull as a burnt offering or a sacrifice, which is to fulfill a vow or to be a fellowship offering to the Lord, ⁹ you are to present along with the young bull six quarts^[y] of fine flour mixed with two quarts^[z] of oil as a grain offering, ¹⁰ and you will present two quarts of wine as the drink offering, as a gift of food^[aa] with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. ¹¹ This is to be provided for each offering from the cattle, rams, lambs, or goats. ¹² You are to supply these offerings for each sacrifice you prepare.

¹³ Everyone who is native-born is to do these things in this way when presenting a gift of food with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. ¹⁴ For your generations to come, if an alien resides with you or someone else settles among you, and he wants to present a gift offered by fire, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord, he is to do just as you do. ¹⁵ In the assembly there will be a single regulation for you and for the resident alien, a permanent regulation for your generations to come. You and the alien will be the same before the Lord. ¹⁶ There will be a single law and a single ordinance for you and the alien residing with you.

¹⁷ The Lord told Moses ¹⁸ to speak to the Israelites and tell them this:

When you come to the land to which I am bringing you ¹⁹ and when you eat from the food of the land, you are to present an elevated offering to the Lord. ²⁰ From the first of your dough you are to present a round^[ab] loaf as an elevated offering. You are to lift it up just like an elevated offering from the threshing floor. ²¹ For your generations to come, you will give to the Lord an elevated offering from the first of your dough.

Offerings for Unintentional Sins

²² When you err unintentionally and do not carry out all these commands, which the Lord has spoken to Moses— ²³ everything that the Lord has commanded you through Moses, from the day that the Lord first gave these commands and onward, for your generations to come— ²⁴ if it was done unintentionally, and the community was not aware of it, the entire community shall offer one young bull as a whole burnt offering, as a pleasing aroma to the Lord, with its grain offering and its drink offering, according to the ordinance, and one male goat as a sin offering. ²⁵ The priest will make atonement for the entire Israelite community, and they will be forgiven, because it was an unintentional error. They are to bring their offering, a gift made by fire to the Lord, and their sin offering before the Lord for their unintentional error. ²⁶ The entire Israelite community and the aliens who reside among them will be forgiven, for all the people were involved in this error unintentionally.

²⁷ If one person errs unintentionally, he must present a year-old female goat for a sin offering. ²⁸ The priest will make atonement for the person who erred unintentionally, since by that unintentional error he sinned against the Lord. When the priest makes atonement for him, he will be forgiven. ²⁹ You shall have a single law for anyone who commits an error unintentionally, whether a native-born Israelite or an alien who resides among you.

³⁰ But a person who does anything defiantly,^[ac] whether he is native-born or an alien, is blaspheming the Lord. That person must be cut off from among his people. ³¹ Because he has despised the Lord’s word and has broken his commands, that person will be completely cut off. His guilt shall remain on him.

The Sabbath-Breaker Put to Death

³² While the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. ³³ The people who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses, Aaron, and the entire community. ³⁴ They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done with him.

³⁵ The Lord said to Moses, “The man must certainly be put to death. The entire community is to stone him outside of the camp.” ³⁶ The entire community brought him outside of the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord commanded Moses.

Tassels on Garments

³⁷ The Lord told Moses ³⁸ to speak to the Israelites and tell them this: