The Sin of Moses
A good book keeps surprising the reader. You go back ten years later and it’s as if the book has changed; it’s now better and more interesting than your memory. Of course, this change is because you the reader have changed. Re-reading a bad or just not-so-good a book, we find the book diminished, maybe just dull. But a good book keeps growing; you find new things in it every time you read it.
The Bible is, if nothing else, a good book, and some say it is the Good Book. Last week, reading along as prescribed in Morning Prayer, I discovered the Bible had more in it than I remembered. In fact, I found I had a serious misconception about one of the most important details in the Old Testament, the sin that Moses committed and on account of which he was not allowed to enter the promised land. I thought, How many times have I read this? And nonetheless, I had never noticed an important detail (and had made up a different detail)!
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In Numbers 20 things go badly wrong. As Moses is leading the people to the land God has promised them, once again they complain against Moses. They chide him, they gripe about the lack of figs and pomegranates, they have no water to drink, they say it would be better if they had died earlier, and they say Moses should never have brought them out of Egypt! This is a strange thing, yet not unknown: that people who are liberated find their new life to have serious challenges in it and they forget how bad it was back when they were slaves of Pharaoh (or wherever that particular liberated people happen to have been).
God tells Moses to take his rod and gather the people together. And what else does God tell Moses to do? I had thought God told him to strike a rock with his rod and that God would cause water to come out of the rock. I had further thought that Moses’ sin was that he struck the rock twice, rather than once. I was wrong.
Numbers chapter 20 verse 8: God says to Moses, “Take the rod . . . and speak ye unto the rock before [the people’s] eyes; and it shall give forth his water.” That’s the antique translation, but all the modern ones I have found are the same. Moses is supposed to speak to the rock. Some translations fill in the gist of what Moses is to say: “tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.” He does have to say something, so it makes sense that he would tell the rock to give forth its water.
But then see what Moses actually says. Verse 10, he speaks to the people, not to the rock: “Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?” And without further spoken words, verse 11: “Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly.”
And as soon as everyone drinks, or maybe even while they are still drinking, God chides Moses. Verse 12: “Because you did not believe in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”
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The reader’s job here is to ponder how that which has just happened is a failure to honor God’s holiness. God pronounces it a failure of faith: “you did not believe in me.” How has Moses failed to believe in God, failed to show the people the holiness of God?
Suppose he had spoken to the rock. What would the people have seen? No physical action! They would have seen Moses but they would have heard Moses speaking to the rock. Before their eyes would have been Moses and, subsequently, water. But in their ears would have been what was really important.
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The Bible often suggests that ears are more trustworthy than eyes. People see the sun and moon and want to worship them, but Genesis 1, which refrains from using the names “sun” and “moon,” tells us they were created by God speaking.
In John, Jesus tells the crowd that they are missing something: they have seen miracles and they want more, but Jesus, the Word of God, needs people to hear his words and not see the signs.
Some have said that Jesus is the rock, out of whom flows living water. In John, Jesus spoke to the woman at the well about the living water he could give her.
Maybe it was more important for the people to hear Moses speak to the rock than to see Moses strike the rock. Maybe faith comes by hearing, as someone else has said.
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A Further Note on Good Books & Good Talk. Next week I hope to be able to announce the dates for our fall seminar series on Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Stay tuned; in the meantime you can get a copy. Any translation will do, but I recommend a reputable publisher (Penguin, FSG, Modern Library, etc.) rather than a cheap word-dump printing. In the first session we will discuss Part One, which includes three “books” (each book is further divided into chapters). This will be about 150 or 200 pages.
Sunday, July 26, I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas.
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On the Web. I’ve published another short Camino piece, over at The Living Church online blog, Covenant. The title, “Guide Our Feet,” comes from a line in daily prayer: “guide our feet in the way of peace.” Here’s the link: https://livingchurch.org/covenant/guide-our-feet/