![]() ![]() They forgot the hardship they had endured and longed for the meats, fruits, and vegetables of Egypt. Shortly after they were freed from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites began to run low on food. The people even complained about God’s judgment that resulted from their complaints (16:41). Aaron and Miriam, Moses’ siblings, complained about Zipporah, Moses’ wife (12:1). They grumbled and rebelled against Moses’ leadership (14:2–5 16:1–3). When they had manna from heaven, they complained they had no meat (11:4–6). They repeatedly complained about food and water (Num. It is derived from an ancient word that describes the sound people make when they complain-a constant, low rumble like you would hear if you put a conch shell to your ear or endured a sleepless night.Īfter all the miracles the children of Israel had seen God do in Egypt, including the parting of the Red Sea so that they could walk through on dry land, they still complained so bitterly that God heard a constant rumbling from their encampment in the wilderness. Seven times in six verses in Numbers, some form of the word murmur appears. Yet He remained faithful to them, as He remains faithful to us, despite His judgment of their sin. In the book of Numbers, the Israelites murmured and complained against God until they so exasperated Him that He threatened to destroy them. We grumble about long lines, prices, people, the weather, and so much more. It is part of humanity’s sinful condition. Sometimes the Bible just uses numbers differently than we do today, and if we fail to recognize this, the fault is ours, not the Bible’s.A lesson in what NOT to do–even though God is always faithful.Ĭomplaining is a flaw of sinners. This applies, particularly, to skeptics wanting to accuse the Bible of being inaccurate. Of course, that doesn’t mean that numbers are always literary or symbolic in ancient texts - the 11 days mentioned in Deuteronomy isn’t.īut it does mean that they can be, and we need to be sensitive to the context to tell us what the ancient author intended. The point of the text is: God strengthened Elijah for a long journey, not how long the journey literally took. Spock or Data - insisting on numerical precision while utterly missing the point. ![]() If we fail to recognize this then, compared to the ancients, we can come off as overly pedantic, like Mr. This illustrates how ancient expectations differ from modern ones regarding the use of number: The ancients were willing to use numbers in a literary or symbolic way in different circumstances than we do. The author even refers to the mountain as “Horeb” rather than “Sinai” - which is the way that Deuteronomy overwhelmingly refers to it.īoth the author and the audience were thus in a position to recognize the description of Elijah’s journey as taking 40 days and 40 nights as a stock number representing a long journey rather than a literal description. The same applies to the author of 1-2 Kings (they were originally one book), who was clearly literate and who records the finding of “the book of the Law” in the temple in 2 Kings 22:8-10. Not only would many in the audience (particularly those from Judea) have known the approximate distances and travel times, many would have known Deuteronomy’s statement! This is also significant because the ancient audience would have known that. ![]()
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