Chapter 32
God's Song that Moses taught the people to remind them that He knew they would rebel, reads in part:
2022 - This verse:
"4 "The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he." [Deu 32:4 ESV]. Is this title for God, "The Rock", a reference back to the water from which the water flowed? Jed's Chitwood book says the Rock is about Jesus, and then ties together some things that I don't think are even related to each other. But this...The Rock is God, the Father, the first person of the Trinity. The Rock is not Christ. If anything, Jesus is represented by the water, but to be consistent with the rest of scripture, the water represents the Holy Spirit. The word translated "The Rock" is the transliterated Hebrew "tsoor". It means rock, cliff, edge...a few others. Here are some other verses that use it:
"6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink." And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel." [Exo 17:6 ESV]. Sure makes you think this is the connection, when the same word is used. BUT, there is also the NT verse:
"4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ." [1Co 10:4 ESV]
So not an "either/or" situation. Paul says the Rock was Christ.
2024 - Here are a number of verse, not all of them by far, that make it clear that in the OT, God was the rock:
15 "But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation. [Deu 32:15 ESV]
2 "There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. [1Sa 2:2 ESV]
3 my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my savior; you save me from violence. ... 32 "For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God? ... 47 "The LORD lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation, [2Sa 22:3, 32, 47 ESV]
31 For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?-- [Psa 18:31 ESV]
9 I say to God, my rock: "Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" [Psa 42:9 ESV]
There is just no doubt that in the OT, beginning with the Song of Moses, the rock was God. Therefore, Paul, in the NT, must be speaking in some other sense. Could it be that the "rock that followed them" in 1Co 10:4 be "followed" in the sense of millennia. About time instead of geography. I mean, rocks do not move. That is a characteristic of rocks and all the verses about God being the rock in the OT have that sense of timeless, stationary, never wavering rock. So Paul didn't mean it that way.
Still 2024 - Here is the BLB definition for G190, followed, akoloutheo in Greek:
to follow one who precedes, join him as his attendant, accompany him
to join one as a disciple, become or be his disciple
side with his party
Now look back at 10:4 and test each of these as the meaning of "followed" in that verse. "the spiritual Rock that followed them". Did Christ follow them physically? No. Pre-incarnate. Did he become their attendant? Certainly not that. Did he accompany them? No, they didn't even know he was coming at this point. How about def 2? Was Jesus THEIR disciple? NO! None of these work. None of these can be correct.
The Rock followed them in time, that is, he came much later than them. He was God when he came, and so the Rock, but he was still spirit at the time of Moses.
This doesn't work very well either. I think what we have here is a metaphor, an analogy, and I am not smart enough to make the right connection to spiritual rocks that follow people around and Jesus. I do not like MacArthur's note below. At all. I will keep at it. It will clear up.
Reading on in 1Co10, Paul says the passing through the sea and the cloud - the baptism into Moses, all eating the same spiritual food, and all drinking the same spiritual drink are examples (typos) for us. So the NT DOES tie these events to the NT as types for us. There is much here that I have not understood yet.
The MSB note on 1Co10 says that the pre-incarnate Christ followed the people of Israel and protected them in the desert. MSB also talks about a "tradition" the Jews had saying that the rock from which the water came actually moved along with the Hebrews as they traveled through the desert, constantly providing them with water. MSB says this is a misunderstanding of what "tsoor" really means. Paul is calling the pre-incarnate Christ the Rock. I am not getting it. I don't understand the connection between Christ in the NT and those two rocks in the OT. Christ as our spiritual food and drink...the rock provided drink, but not food. I don't think this is the typology that Paul is speaking of. There is more here.
Some other verses:
"21 And the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock," [Exo 33:21 ESV]
In Ex 17:6 above, and again here, God is near the rock, but is not literally the Rock. YET, in Deu 32:4, Moses refers to God as THE ROCK.
I still do not see how any of this helps explain why Moses was to speak to the second rock rather than strike it, and I still say there was more to this sin than just the breach of procedure. There was far more to it if it kept both Moses and Aaron from Canaan.
This one:
"13 He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock." [Deu 32:13 ESV]
This has to be metaphor, and this is about Abraham. No, if you look at how it starts it goes back much further than that, to the sons of Noah. He gave them all honey and oil from rock. In all these examples, "The Rock" sustains the chosen of God. No matter the place where God's chosen found themselves - desert, mountain, under the sea, in the cloud, dwelling in tents - no matter how rocky and harsh their literal situation, God supplied all their needs, and the rocks at Horeb and Mirabah are the types for that. The rocks are about God's provision, God's plan. In the same way that the rocks provided physical sustenance, Christ was and is God's provision for spiritual sustenance. This makes sense as typology.
BUT, it still does NOT explain the difference in hitting and speaking. Moses keeps on, in his song, about the Rock...and let us not forget that Moses has identified this Rock as God, not Christ:
"15 "But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation." [Deu 32:15 ESV]. They forsook God - they didn't even know Jesus - and they worshiped other gods. They abandoned the real source in favor of fakes.
This verse is still more corroboration that Moses DOES NOT have Jesus in view in this song:
"18 You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth." [Deu 32:18 ESV]
6 Do you thus repay the LORD, you foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you? [Deu 32:6 ESV]
This one should hit home to us today. Look at the rampant disregard for God and His ways in this country, and many others. We make our own rules, as if we have authority to do so, and we follow the rules of men because they make "good sense" to us, and they establish our rights. Not rights as the created of God, but rights of our own, to stand alone. As if we could! Does the slave tell the master what rules he will follow? Does the private tell the general? The prisoner tell the warden? No, in all these cases we see how ridiculous even the concept of it would be. But that's what we do when we tell God what rights we have.
These verses:
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. 9 But the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. [Deu 32:8-9 ESV]
I copy these in because of the MSB note about them. This idea never occurred to me, but from MSB. I'll copy it as a quote:
"The Most High. This title for God emphasized His sovereignty and authority over all the nations (See Ge 11:9, 10:32, 14:18, Nu 24:16) with the amazing revelation that in the whole plan for the world, God had as His goal the salvation of His chosen people. God ordained a plan where the number of nations (70 according to Gen 10) corresponded to the number of the children of Israel (70 according to Gen 46:27). Further, as God gave the nations their lands, He established their boundaries, leaving Israel enough land to sustain their expected population."
Never ever have I heard anything like this before. Here is Gen 10:1:
1 These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. [Gen 10:1 ESV]
All the sons, the cities, the "nations" that arose following the flood are listed in this chapter. I did not try to count them, but I'm betting there are 70. So MSB is saying it was right here that all the nations of the earth were established. Names change, boundaries move here and there, but Israel is always there? Even from 70 AD to 1948?
Here is Gen. 46:27:
27 And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy. [Gen 46:27 ESV]
Is this a big stretch...or is this something almost everyone misses? I can see in the Deuteronomy verses how you can fit this in there...but is that really what Moses meant? So interesting!
2021 - This is still a fascinating verse. Here it is in KJV:
8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. [Deu 32:8 KJV]
There is also a note in TCR for Deu 32:8-9 suggesting comparison between several original texts including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint. Then it says that the Masoretic Text reads "sons of Israel" rather than "sons of God". This all makes it seem like a pretty important verse, and like even the "copiers" tried to clear it up as they translated into other languages. I assume the Dead Sea Scrolls are mentioned because they include a very old copy.
17 They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded. [Deu 32:17 ESV]
Demons masquerade as gods, to deceive, to corrupt, to diminish. But never to promote anything but their own hatred.
2023 - In vss 24-25, God says he will destroy them by hunger, plague, and poisonous pestilence, teeth of beasts and venom of crawling things, and sword. These are the four that God uses, always, to punish, to correct. Famine, sword, disease, and beasts. Are we being corrected?
These two verses:
26 I would have said, "I will cut them to pieces; I will wipe them from human memory," 27 had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, "Our hand is triumphant, it was not the LORD who did all this."' [Deu 32:26-27 ESV]
Answers the question of why the Lord put up with such a people as Israel. He didn't want others to think they had done away with what God had chosen. Moses used this argument several times, asking God to spare Israel lest the Egyptians think either that God couldn't protect His people, or that God had just taken them out there to destroy them because they were so bad. This theme runs through it all. Would be nice to compile the verses where Moses uses this argument coupled with this final explanation of why that argument carried so much weight.
This verse defines a wise nation:
29 If they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their latter end! [Deu 32:29 ESV]
Puts the lie to existentialism. Also to atheism. The first says today is all we need focus on, not the consequences. Atheism says there is no latter end.
Moses tells them the purpose of this song, so they give it the weight that it deserves:
47 For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess." [Deu 32:47 ESV]
This verse:
51 because you broke faith with me in the midst of the people of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, and because you did not treat me as holy in the midst of the people of Israel. [Deu 32:51 ESV]
Answers the question of what exactly Moses did that was so bad it overcame all the good things he did, and kept him out of Canaan. He broke faith. He made God less than holy.
However...the MSB note on 32:48-34:12 says "This literary unit was composed and added to the text after the death of Moses." I guess we don't know who wrote them. Still, they are in the Bible, they should be given much weight.
2022 - This is God's reason, his stated, specific reason for keeping Moses and Aaron from Canaan. 1, because he broke faith with God at Meribah-kadesh, and 2, he did not treat God as holy before the people. Perhaps, really, those two are the very same. If we say that the problem was that Moses disagreed with God's plan for the people after they failed at the door of Canaan, after they cried all night like babies, and had no faith or courage...what? Did Moses think they should all be killed? Did he think they should get to go in anyway? Did he think that HE should get to go in and wait while they wandered in the wilderness? And how did striking instead of speaking show us that Moses diminished God's holiness? What different perception would the people have had about God if Moses had only spoken to the rock rather than strike it? How would the people have seen that differently? By striking, Moses indicated that God "needed" him to accomplish things, to provide for Israel? No, that makes no sense.
I don't understand why I cannot understand this. I don't understand why I am so obsessed with understanding why what Moses did was so very wrong? Joshua and Caleb were not sinless. But their sins were "small" enough that they still got to go in. You know Moses wanted to go in, he was as faithful at the point of decision as Joshua and Caleb were.
Did Moses not understand that they would be going in, they'd just have to wait 40 years, or did he think God had "failed" to keep His promise? Did Moses think the 40 years was to wipe out Israel entirely, and that he was leading nothing more than a death march? Did he think that God just wasn't going to be able to do what he said he would do? And if God couldn't do that, maybe he needed help with the rock? Maybe Moses decided it was himself that was able to bring water from rocks, by his actions, and that he could do so without any help from God. Or that God could not do it without his help, since God had just shown that he couldn't lead Israel into Canaan, because they wouldn't follow him. Did Moses believe himself a better leader than God? Did he think he understood more about how to lead people than God?
I JUST DON'T KNOW, and there is nothing in Arlen Chitwood's book that explains it. He is on and on about types and symbols and foreshadowing.
2023 - I still don't get it. I don't "see" either of God's reasons. Broke faith? By striking instead of speaking? If he did - and he must have because God says he did - then the sin was inside Moses' head. Had I been there watching, and Moses struck the rock, I would not have thought "Oh hey, Moses just broke faith with God." Even to think that, as one of the people, I'd have to already know that God told him to speak to the rock, and that Moses was doing it wrong. Did the people know that? No. In Numbers 20:6, Moses and Aaron LEAVE the presence of the people and go to the door of the tent of meeting, where God appears to them, and tells Moses to speak to the rock. Here is that verse: 8 "Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle." [Num 20:8 ESV]. And the next verse says this: 9 And Moses took the staff from before the LORD, as he commanded him. [Num 20:9 ESV]. So maybe this whole thing is about that staff? Where was this staff and what was important about it??? We have to go back to this sequence of events that begins in Numbers 16...
2023 - In Numbers 16 we have the rebellion of Korah where Korah, Abiram and Dathan attempt to usurp the positions of Moses and Aaron, and God makes an end of the rebels, of the conspirators, showing absolutely clearly that God has chosen Moses and Aaron to lead the people, and that the things Moses and Aaron do are from God. The ground opens up and swallows the three rebel leaders, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram - something never seen before, to prove it is from God. Even so, the VERY NEXT DAY, all the people of Israel approach and accuse Moses and Aaron of killing people, in this verse: 41 But on the next day all the congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron, saying, "You have killed the people of the LORD." [Num 16:41 ESV]. They are STILL blaming Moses and Aaron for the things that happen. They think Moses and Aaron are wielding the power of God however they want, and they make Aaron and Moses RESPONSIBLE for the deaths of all those people the previous day, rather than understanding that it was God who put down the rebellion, using Moses and Aaron as his spokesmen. God is incensed by this and sends a plague to kill the entire nation of Israel. Moses dispatches Aaron, with a censer containing coals from the altar, to get between the dying and those not yet exposed, and this stops the plague. So...you would think the people would give credit to Moses when he saves their lives, but they just never quite see it that way.
After the plague has stopped, God says this:
2 "Speak to the people of Israel, and get from them staffs, one for each fathers' house, from all their chiefs according to their fathers' houses, twelve staffs. Write each man's name on his staff, [Num 17:2 ESV] All the staffs went into the tent of meeting overnight, and this verse: 5 And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout. Thus I will make to cease from me the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against you." ... 10 And the LORD said to Moses, "Put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign for the rebels, that you may make an end of their grumblings against me, lest they die." [Num 17:5, 10 ESV]. So the idea was that God would send a sign overnight, making the staff of his chosen bud, and that would stop people grumbling about Moses and Aaron. It would show instead that it was God who was making the decisions. The next day, Aaron's staff, and only his staff, had budded and had ripe almonds growing on it, indicating that Moses and Aaron were in charge and there should be no more rebellions. After this is done, we get this verse: 10 And the LORD said to Moses, "Put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign for the rebels, that you may make an end of their grumblings against me, lest they die." [Num 17:10 ESV]. This staff became a symbol to show, to remind the people, that they have no business rebelling against Moses and Aaron, because it is God who is doing these things. Moses and Aaron are NOT deciding whom to punish and how to punish. Moses and Aaron are not responsible for the earth opening up and swallowing people. God is the one deciding these things. And it is here that the Aaron's staff remained until Numbers 20.
2023 - That brings us back to Meribah, and to Numbers 20:8,9, where God tells Moses to go and retrieve this very same staff, get everyone together, and to speak to the rock. Moses goes in and gets that staff. Here is what Moses does next:
10 Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, "Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?"
11 And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock.
12 And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them." [Num 20:8, 10-12 ESV]
So while holding this staff, this reminder that God is in charge of everything, that it is God who sends the plagues or the blessings as He sees fit, and these things DO NOT come from Aaron and Moses, Moses says "Shall WE BRING WATER FOR YOU..." And then Moses uses this symbolic staff as a tool and strikes the rock with it. What was supposed to happen is that this staff was to remind the people of the results of their previous rebellions against Aaron and Moses, because here they were doing it again, and the rock was to flow when spoken to, showing that God was making the water rather than that Moses knew some trick to get rocks to give up water by his own actions. Moses' fault was then what? Does any of this help at all? Moses broke faith in that he did not carry out God's command precisely. Being faithful is being obedient to the commands of one's master. And he did not treat God as Holy, in that he usurped God's position as the one who brings both blessing and curse by saying "Shall we...". After all that trouble to show that Moses was NOT making the decisions, Moses' does things in a way that portrays him to the people as the one making the decisions. Moses knew what that staff symbolized - basically it showed that Moses had no power to anything but what God told him to do - and then Moses "over rode" that symbol, in his anger at the people, and made it look like he DID have the power whenever he chose to exercise it. And the sin was infinitely worse because of Moses' position. The people would have recognized Moses' words as contradicting what God had shown them by making that staff bud in the first place. They'd have seen this as Moses placing himself above God.
2023 - Maybe that's it. I've gotten obsessed with it once again, and as a result I have connected the details - the staff which is central to the story and which I had not previously paid any attention to at all - and maybe finally I understand. I do now see the sense of it..
That very day, the day that Moses taught them this song, God called him up to Mount Nebo, to see into Canaan, and then to die on that mountain.
This song should be read often. Monthly at least. So much perspective here. It would keep us mindful of our place in the grand scheme of things.