Chapter 36—In the Wilderness
For nearly forty years the children of Israel are lost to view in the
obscurity of the desert. “The space,” says Moses, “in which we came
from Kadesh-barnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was
thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were
wasted out from among the host, as the Lord sware unto them. For
indeed the hand of the Lord was against them, to destroy them from
among the host, until they were consumed.”
Deuteronomy 2:14, 15
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During these years the people were constantly reminded that they
were under the divine rebuke. 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
ordinance of the Passover, instituted to commemorate the 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 hath blessed thee in all the works of
thy hand,” said Moses, in rehearsing the history of their wanderings.
“He knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness; these forty
years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.”
And the Levites’ hymn, recorded by Nehemiah, vividly pictures God’s
care for Israel, even during these years of rejection and banishment:
“Thou in Thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness:
the pillar of the cloud departed not from them by day, to lead them
in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night, to show them light, and
the way wherein they should go. Thou gavest also Thy good Spirit to
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instruct them, and withheldest not Thy manna from their mouth, and
gavest them water for their thirst. Yea, forty years didst Thou sustain
them in the wilderness; ... their clothes waxed not old, and their feet
swelled not.”
Nehemiah 9:19-21
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