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Forty Years of Wandering in the Wilderness
For nearly forty years the people of Israel were lost to view in
the vast, out-of-the-way desert. In the rebellion at Kadesh they had
rejected God, and for the time God had rejected them. Since they
had been unfaithful to His covenant, they were not to receive the sign
of the covenant, the rite of circumcision. Their desire to return to
the land of slavery had proved they were unworthy of freedom, and
the Passover, instituted to remember and celebrate their deliverance
from slavery, was not to be observed.
But the tabernacle service continued, showing that God had not
completely left His people. And His divine care still supplied their
wants. “The Lord your God ... knows your trudging through this
great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with
you; you have lacked nothing” (
Deuteronomy 2:7
). God cared for
Israel even during these years of banishment: “You also gave Your
good Spirit to instruct them. ... In the wilderness ... their clothes did
not wear out and their feet did not swell” (
Nehemiah 9:20, 21
).
The wilderness was to provide discipline for the rising generation
as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. Moses declared, “As
a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you,” “to
humble you, and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether
you would keep His commandments or not. So He ... allowed you
to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did
your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not
live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from
the mouth of the Lord” (
Deuteronomy 8:5, 2, 3
).
“In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His
Presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them;
and He bore them and carried them all the days of old” (
Isaiah 63:9
).
The rebellion of Korah had resulted in the death of fourteen
thousand Israelites, and certain cases of rebellion showed the same
spirit of disrespect for God’s authority.
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