- 117-
long afterwards Israel called downupon themselves and their children the blood of
Jesus, long and sore judgments were to befall thestiffnecked and rebellious, even
although ultimately all Israel should be saved, so was it at Kadesh.According to the
number of days that the spies had searched the land, were to be the years of
theirwanderings in the wilderness, and of all that generation which had come out from
Egypt, at the age oftwenty and upwards, not one was to enter the Land of Promise,
but their carcasses were to fall inthat wilderness, with the exception of Caleb and
Joshua. But as for the other ten searchers of theland, quick destruction overtook
them, and they "died by the plague before Jehovah."
This commencement of Divine judgment, coupled as it was with abundant evidence of
its reality -especially in the immediate destruction of the ten spies, while Caleb and
Joshua were preserved alive- produced an effect so strange and unlooked for, that we
could scarcely understand it, but forkindred experience in all ages of the Church. It
was now quite plain to Israel what they might, andcertainly would have obtained, had
they only gone forward. Yesterday that Land of Promise - in allits beauty and with all
its riches - so close at hand as to be almost within sight of those mountainranges, was
literally theirs. Today it was lost to them. Not one of their number was even to see
it.More than that, their carcasses were to fall in that wilderness! All this simply
because they would notgo forward yesterday! Let them do so today. If they had then
done wrong, let them do the oppositetoday, and they would do right. Moreover, it was
to Israel that God had pledged His word, and asIsrael, He would have brought them
into the land. They were Israel still let them now go forward andclaim Israel's portion.
But it was not so; and never is so in kindred circumstances. The wrong of ourrebellion
and unbelief is not turned into right by attempting the exact opposite. His still the
samespirit, which prompted the one, that influences the other. The obedience which is
not of simple faith isof self-confidence, and only another kind of unbelief and self-
righteousness. It is not the doing of thisor that, nor the circumstance of outwardly
belonging to Israel, which secures victory over the enemy,safety, or possession of the
land. It is that "Jehovah is among us." (Numbers 14:42) And the victoryis ever that of
faith. Not a dead promise to the descendants of Jacob after the flesh, but the
presenceof the living God among His believing Israel secured to them the benefits of
the covenant. AndIsrael's determination to go up on the morrow, and so to retrieve the
past, argued as great spiritualignorance and unfitness, and involved as much rebellion
and sin, as their former faint-heartedness andrebellion at the report of the spies.
In vain Moses urged these considerations on the people. The people "presumed to go
up to thehead of the mountain," although Moses and the Ark of the Covenant of
Jehovah remained behind inthe camp.
From Kadesh it is only about twenty miles to Hormah, to which place their enemies
afterwards"smote and discomfited them." As we know from the descriptions of
(^)