Chapter 36—Forty Years of Wandering in the
Wilderness
For nearly forty years the children of Israel were lost to view in the
obscurity of the desert. In the rebellion at Kadesh they had rejected
God, and God had for the time rejected them. Since they had proved
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 shown them to be unworthy of freedom; and the Passover,
instituted to commemorate deliverance from bondage, was not to be
observed.
Yet the continuance of the tabernacle service testified that God had
not utterly forsaken His people. And His providence still supplied their
wants. “The Lord thy God ... knoweth thy walking through this great
wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee;
thou hast lacked nothing.”
Deuteronomy 2:7
. God cared for Israel even
during these years of banishment: “Thou gavest also Thy good Spirit
to instruct them... . In the wilderness ... their clothes waxed not old,
and their feet swelled not.”
Nehemiah 9:20, 21
.
The wilderness was to serve as a discipline for the rising generation,
preparatory to their entrance into the Promised Land. Moses declared,
“As a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee,”
“to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,
whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no. And He ...
suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest
not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make thee know that
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man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”
Deuteronomy 8:5, 2, 3
.
“In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His pres-
ence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and
He bare them, and carried them all the days of old.”
Isaiah 63:9
.
The revolt of Korah had resulted in the destruction of fourteen
thousand of Israel. And isolated cases showed the same spirit of
contempt for divine authority.
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