Numbers 11-14

Numbers 11

¹Now the people were saying evil against the Lord; and the Lord, hearing it, was angry and sent fire on them, burning the outer parts of the tent-circle.

²And the people made an outcry to Moses, and Moses made prayer to the Lord, and the fire was stopped.

³So that place was named Taberah, because of the fire of the Lord which had been burning among them.

⁴And the mixed band of people who went with them were overcome by desire: and the children of Israel, weeping again, said, Who will give us flesh for our food?

⁵Sweet is the memory of the fish we had in Egypt for nothing, and the fruit and green plants of every sort, sharp and pleasing to the taste:

⁶But now our soul is wasted away; there is nothing at all: we have nothing but this manna before our eyes.

⁷Now the manna was like a seed of grain, like small clear drops.

⁸The people went about taking it up from the earth, crushing it between stones or hammering it to powder, and boiling it in pots, and they made cakes of it: its taste was like the taste of cakes cooked with oil.

⁹When the dew came down on the tents at night, the manna came down with it.

¹⁰And at the sound of the people weeping, every man at his tent-door, the wrath of the Lord was great, and Moses was very angry.

¹¹And Moses said to the Lord, Why have you done me this evil? and why have I not grace in your eyes, that you have put on me the care of all this people?

¹²Am I the father of all this people? have I given them birth, that you say to me, Take them in your arms, like a child at the breast, to the land which you gave by an oath to their fathers?

¹³Where am I to get flesh to give to all this people? For they are weeping to me and saying, Give us flesh for our food.

¹⁴I am not able by myself to take the weight of all this people, for it is more than my strength.

¹⁵If this is to be my fate, put me to death now in answer to my prayer, if I have grace in your eyes; and let me not see my shame.

¹⁶And the Lord said to Moses, Send for seventy of the responsible men of Israel, who are in your opinion men of weight and authority over the people; make them come to the Tent of meeting and be there with you.

¹⁷And I will come down and have talk with you there: and I will take some of the spirit which is on you and put it on them, and they will take part of the weight of the people off you, so that you do not have to take it by yourself.

¹⁸And say to the people, Make yourselves clean before tomorrow and you will have flesh for your food: for in the ears of the Lord you have been weeping and saying, Who will give us flesh for food? for we were well off in Egypt: and so the Lord will give you flesh, and it will be your food;

¹⁹Not for one day only, or even for five or ten or twenty days;

²⁰But every day for a month, till you are tired of it, turning from it in disgust: because you have gone against the Lord who is with you, and have been weeping before him saying, Why did we come out of Egypt?

²¹Then Moses said, The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand men on foot; and you have said, I will give them flesh to be their food for a month.

²²Are flocks and herds to be put to death for them? or are all the fish in the sea to be got together so that they may be full?

²³And the Lord said to Moses, Has the Lord's hand become short? Now you will see if my word comes true for you or not.

²⁴And Moses went out and gave the people the words of the Lord: and he took seventy of the responsible men of the people, placing them round the Tent.

²⁵Then the Lord came down in the cloud and had talk with him, and put on the seventy men some of the spirit which was on him: now when the spirit came to rest on them, they were like prophets, but only at that time.

²⁶But two men were still in the tent-circle one of them named Eldad and the other Medad: and the spirit came to rest on them; they were among those who had been sent for, but they had not gone out to the Tent: and the prophet's power came on them in the tent-circle.

²⁷And a young man went running to Moses and said, Eldad and Medad are acting as prophets in the tent-circle.

²⁸Then Joshua, the son of Nun, who had been Moses' servant from the time when he was a child, said, My lord Moses, let them be stopped.

²⁹And Moses said to him, Are you moved by envy on my account? If only all the Lord's people were prophets, and the Lord might put his spirit on them!

³⁰Then Moses, with the responsible men of Israel, went back to the tent-circle.

³¹Then the Lord sent a wind, driving little birds from the sea, so that they came down on the tents, and all round the tent-circle, about a day's journey on this side and on that, in masses about two cubits high over the face of the earth.

³²And all that day and all night and the day after, the people were taking up the birds; the smallest amount which anyone got was ten homers: and they put them out all round the tents.

³³But while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was tasted, the wrath of the Lord was moved against the people and he sent a great outburst of disease on them.

³⁴So that place was named Kibroth-hattaavah; because there they put in the earth the bodies of the people who had given way to their desires.

³⁵From Kibroth-hattaavah the people went on to Hazeroth; and there they put up their tents.

Numbers 12

¹Now Miriam and Aaron said evil against Moses, because of the Cushite woman to whom he was married, for he had taken a Cushite woman as his wife.

²And they said, Have the words of the Lord been given to Moses only? have they not come to us? And the Lord took note of it.

³Now the man Moses was more gentle than any other man on earth.

⁴And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Come out, you three, to the Tent of meeting. And the three of them went out.

⁵And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, taking his place at the door of the Tent, and made Aaron and Miriam come before him.

⁶And he said, Now give ear to my words: if there is a prophet among you I will give him knowledge of myself in a vision and will let my words come to him in a dream.

⁷My servant Moses is not so; he is true to me in all my house:

⁸With him I will have talk mouth to mouth, openly and not in dark sayings; and with his eyes he will see the form of the Lord: why then had you no fear of saying evil against my servant Moses?

⁹And burning with wrath against them, the Lord went away.

¹⁰And the cloud was moved from over the Tent; and straight away Miriam became a leper, as white as snow: and Aaron, looking at Miriam, saw that she was a leper.

¹¹Then Aaron said to Moses, O my lord, let not our sin be on our heads, for we have done foolishly and are sinners.

¹²Let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half wasted when he comes out from the body of his mother.

¹³And Moses, crying to the Lord, said, Let my prayer come before you, O God, and make her well.

¹⁴And the Lord said to Moses, If her father had put a mark of shame on her, would she not be shamed for seven days? Let her be shut up outside the tent-circle for seven days, and after that she may come in again.

¹⁵So Miriam was shut up outside the tent-circle for seven days: and the people did not go forward on their journey till Miriam had come in again.

¹⁶After that, the people went on from Hazeroth and put up their tents in the waste land of Paran.

Numbers 13

¹And the Lord said to Moses,

²Send men to get knowledge about the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel; from every tribe of their fathers you are to send a man, every one a chief among them.

³And Moses sent them from the waste land of Paran as the Lord gave orders, all of them men who were heads of the children of Israel.

⁴And these were their names: of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua, the son of Zaccur.

⁵Of the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat, the son of Hori.

⁶Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh.

⁷Of the tribe of Issachar, Igal, the son of Joseph.

⁸Of the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea, the son of Nun.

⁹Of the tribe of Benjamin, Palti, the son of Raphu.

¹⁰Of the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel, the son of Sodi.

¹¹Of the tribe of Joseph, that is of the family of Manasseh, Gaddi, the son of Susi.

¹²Of the tribe of Dan, Ammiel, the son of Gemalli.

¹³Of the tribe of Asher, Sethur, the son of Michael

¹⁴Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi, the son of Vophsi.

¹⁵Of the tribe of Gad, Gevel, the son of Machi.

¹⁶These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to get knowledge about the land. And Moses gave to Hoshea, the son of Nun, the name of Joshua.

¹⁷So Moses sent them to have a look at the land of Canaan, and said to them, Go up into the South and into the hill-country;

¹⁸And see what the land is like; and if the people living in it are strong or feeble, small or great in number;

¹⁹And what sort of land they are living in, if it is good or bad; and what their living-places are, tent-circles or walled towns;

²⁰And if the land is fertile or poor, and if there is wood in it or not. And be of good heart, and come back with some of the produce of the land. Now it was the time when the first grapes were ready.

²¹So they went up and got a view of the land, from the waste land of Zin to Rehob, on the way to Hamath.

²²They went up into the South and came to Hebron; and Ahiman and Sheshai and Talmai, the children of Anak, were living there. (Now the building of Hebron took place seven years before that of Zoan in Egypt.)

²³And they came to the valley of Eshcol, and cutting down a vine-branch with its grapes, two of them took it on a rod between them; and they took some pomegranates and figs.

²⁴That place was named the valley of Eshcol because of the grapes which the children of Israel took from there.

²⁵At the end of forty days they came back from viewing the land.

²⁶And they came back to Moses and Aaron and all the children of Israel, to Kadesh in the waste land of Paran; and gave an account to them and to all the people and let them see the produce of the land.

²⁷And they said, We came to the land where you sent us, and truly it is flowing with milk and honey: and here is some of the produce of it.

²⁸But the people living in the land are strong, and the towns are walled and very great; further, we saw the children of Anak there.

²⁹And the Amalekites are in the South; and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill-country; and the Canaanites by the sea and by the side of Jordan.

³⁰Then Caleb made signs to the people to keep quiet, and said to Moses, Let us go up straight away and take this land; for we are well able to overcome it.

³¹But the men who had gone up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.

³²And they gave the children of Israel a bad account of the land they had been to see, saying, This land through which we went is a land causing destruction to those living in it; and all the people we saw there are men of more than common size.

³³There we saw those great men, the sons of Anak, offspring of the Nephilim: and we seemed to ourselves no more than insects, and so we seemed to them.

Numbers 14

¹Then all the people gave load cries of grief, and all that night they gave themselves up to weeping.

²And all the children of Israel, crying out against Moses and Aaron, said, If only we had come to our death in the land of Egypt, or even in this waste land!

³Why is the Lord taking us into this land to come to our death by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will get into strange hands: would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?

⁴And they said to one another, Let us make a captain over us, and go back to Egypt.

⁵Then Moses and Aaron went down on their faces before the meeting of the people.

⁶And Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, two of those who had been to see the land, giving signs of grief,

⁷Said to all the children of Israel, This land which we went through to see is a very good land.

⁸And if the Lord has delight in us, he will take us into this land and give it to us, a land flowing with milk and honey.

⁹Only, do not go against the Lord or go in fear of the people of the land, for they will be our food; their strength has been taken from them and the Lord is with us: have no fear of them.

¹⁰But all the people said they were to be stoned. Then the glory of the Lord was seen in the Tent of meeting, before the eyes of all the children of Israel.

¹¹And the Lord said to Moses, How long will this people have no respect for me? how long will they be without faith, in the face of all the signs I have done among them?

¹²I will send disease on them for their destruction, and take away their heritage, and I will make of you a nation greater and stronger than they.

¹³And Moses said to the Lord, Then it will come to the ears of the Egyptians; for by your power you took this people out from among them;

¹⁴And they will give the news to the people of this land: they have had word that you, Lord, are present with this people, letting yourself be seen face to face, and that your cloud is resting over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.

¹⁵Now if you put to death all this people as one man, then the nations who have had word of your glory will say,

¹⁶Because the Lord was not able to take this people into the land which he made an oath to give them, he sent destruction on them in the waste land.

¹⁷So now, may my prayer come before you, and let the power of the Lord be great, as you said:

¹⁸The Lord is slow to wrath and great in mercy, overlooking wrongdoing and evil, and will not let wrongdoers go free; sending punishment on children for the sins of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation.

¹⁹May the sin of this people have forgiveness, in the measure of your great mercy, as you have had mercy on them from Egypt up till now.

²⁰And the Lord said, I have had mercy, as you say:

²¹But truly, as I am living, and as all the earth will be full of the glory of the Lord;

²²Because all these men, having seen my glory and the signs which I have done in Egypt and in the waste land, still have put me to the test ten times, and have not given ear to my voice;

²³They will not see the land about which I made an oath to their fathers; not one of these by whom I have not been honoured will see it.

²⁴But my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit in him, and has been true to me with all his heart, him I will take into that land into which he went, and his seed will have it for their heritage.

²⁵Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites are in the valley; tomorrow, turning round, go into the waste land by the way to the Red Sea.

²⁶Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron,

²⁷How long am I to put up with this evil people and their outcries against me? The words which they say against me have come to my ears.

²⁸Say to them, By my life, says the Lord, as certainly as your words have come to my ears, so certainly will I do this to you:

²⁹Your dead bodies will be stretched out in this waste land; and of all your number, all those of twenty years old and over who have been crying out against me,

³⁰Not one will come into the land which I gave my word you would have for your resting-place, but only Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun.

³¹And your little ones, whom you said would come into strange hands, I will take in, and they will see the land which you would not have.

³²But as for you, your dead bodies will be stretched in this waste land.

³³And your children will be wanderers in the waste land for forty years, undergoing punishment for your false ways, till your bodies become dust in the waste land.

³⁴And as you went through the land viewing it for forty days, so for forty years, a year for every day, you will undergo punishment for your wrongdoing, and you will see that I am against you.

³⁵I the Lord have said it, and this I will certainly do to all this evil people who have come together against me: in this waste land destruction will come on them, and death will be their fate.

³⁶And the men whom Moses sent to see the land, and who, by the bad account they gave of the land, were the cause of the outcry the people made against Moses,

³⁷Those same men who said evil of the land, came to their death by disease before the Lord.

³⁸But Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, of those who went to see the land, were not touched by disease.

³⁹And when Moses put these words before the children of Israel, the people were full of grief.

⁴⁰And early in the morning they got up and went to the top of the mountain, saying, We are here and we will go up to the place which the Lord said he would give us: for we have done wrong.

⁴¹And Moses said, Why are you now acting against the Lord's order, seeing that no good will come of it?

⁴²Go not up, for the Lord is not with you, and you will be overcome by those who are fighting against you.

⁴³For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you will be put to death by their swords: because you have gone back from the way of the Lord, the Lord will not be with you.

⁴⁴But they gave no attention to his words and went to the top of the mountain, though Moses and the ark of the Lord's agreement did not go out of the tent-circle.

⁴⁵Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites who were living in the hill-country, and overcame them completely, driving them back as far as Hormah.