Numbers 11

II. THE JOURNEY STARTED: ISRAEL’S UNBELIEF, FAILURE AND PUNISHMENT

1. The Departure and the First Failure

CHAPTER 10:11-36

1. The cloud moves (Num 10:11-13)

2. The standard of the camp of Judah (Num 10:14-17)

3. The standard of the camp of Reuben (Num 10:18-21)

4. The standard of the camp of Ephraim (Num 10:22-24)

5. The standard of the camp of Dan (Num 10:25-28)

6.The first failure (Num 10:29-32)

7. The cloud leading (Num 10:33-36)

It was on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle and the signal was given for the camp to break up. The wilderness journey begins and we shall soon be face to face with the sad story of Israel’s failure, a failure which is repeated in the history of Christendom. What a magnificent spectacle it must have been when the camp of Israel moved for the first time in its divinely arranged order! No pen can describe the scene. The cloud moved and advanced towards the wilderness of Paran. Judah with his flowing standard led by Nahshon comes first. Then the tabernacle was taken down and the sons of Gershon and Merari set forward carrying the different parts of the tabernacle. In the second chapter instruction was given that the tabernacle was to set forward with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camp. Here the order is changed. We shall find later the reason for this. Then the Other camps followed, all in perfect order with Dan the rear guard of all the camps. Was it possible that one not an eye-witness could have given such a remarkable and minute description of all this? Only the person who was actually there and saw it with his own eyes could have written this account. No compiler living a few hundred years later could have produced such a work.

How beautiful the order in the camp! What a contrast with the disorder and concision which followed so soon! And this has all been repeated in Christendom.

The incident between Moses and Hobab is significant. The first failure is recorded and it is on the side of Moses. He turned to his father-in-law, a man who knew the wilderness well, and said, “Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes.” Criticism has pointed this out as one of the marks of imperfection in this book and calls it a contradiction. It is a contradiction, but not in the sense as infidelity takes it. It gives a perfect picture of what the human heart is, and therefore is a mark of the perfection of this record. Jehovah had offered Himself as the leader of His people. He was to be eyes for them. And Moses as the human leader of the host of Israel, knowing Jehovah and His promise, turns to a poor Midianite and expects guidance and directions of him! How true it is what one has said, “We find it hard to lean upon an unseen arm. A Hobab that we can see inspires us with more confidence than the living God whom we cannot see. We move on with comfort and satisfaction when we possess the countenance and help of some poor fellow-mortal, but we hesitate, falter and quail when called to move on in naked faith in God.” Every Christian believer knows this tendency of the heart. Every failure begins with leaning on the arm of flesh and leaving out the Lord. And now we understand why the tabernacle was taken to the front and out of the place in the middle of the camps. Jehovah anticipated this failure and graciously, not in judgment, He acts towards His people. “The ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days journey to search out a resting place for them.” They wanted to find a resting place through Hobab’s guiding eye for the tabernacle and the camp, and now Jehovah in unspeakable condescension and marvellous patience proceeds to search out a resting place for His people. Thus while we fail, He never fails His people. “Oh! for faith to trust Him more.”