Forty Years

Read it: Numbers 13–14; Deuteronomy 6

From Mount Sinai to the edge of the promised land was not far. “It is an eleven-day journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea” (Deuteronomy 1:2), and Horeb is another name for Sinai. It took Israel forty years. This chapter is about why.

Grapes and giants

After a year at Sinai, with God’s tent now in the middle of the camp, Israel marched north to Kadesh, an oasis on the southern edge of Canaan, the land God had promised to Abraham. God told Moses to send twelve men, one from each tribe, to scout it out. For forty days they explored, and they came back carrying a single cluster of grapes so big that two men had to carry it on a pole between them.

Their report began well: “it is flowing with milk and honey. Here is some of its fruit!” Then everything turned on a single “nevertheless”: “Nevertheless, the people living in the land are strong, and the cities are large and fortified” (Numbers 13:27–28). They had seen the descendants of Anak, a clan of huge warriors.

Caleb, one of the twelve, tried to calm the crowd: “We must go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly conquer it!” (Numbers 13:30). But ten of the scouts disagreed, and their verdict spread through the camp: “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own sight” (Numbers 13:33).

Notice what happened. The ten weren’t lying about the walls or the giants. They measured the problem accurately. What they left out of their calculation was God, the same God who had just split the sea in front of them.

A night of tears

That night the whole nation wept. “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this wilderness!” they cried, and they began to plan a new leader to take them back to slavery (Numbers 14:2–4). Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes in grief and pleaded with them: “Do not be afraid of the people of the land, for they will be like bread for us. Their protection has been removed, and the LORD is with us” (Numbers 14:9). The crowd’s answer was to pick up stones to kill them.

Then the glory of the LORD appeared at the tent. God said to Moses, “How long will they refuse to believe in Me, despite all the signs I have performed among them?” (Numbers 14:11). Once again Moses prayed for the people, reminding God of His own words: “The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in loving devotion, forgiving iniquity and transgression” (Numbers 14:18).

And God answered, “I have pardoned them as you requested” (Numbers 14:20). But forgiveness did not cancel the consequences. That generation would not enter the land. In a terrible twist, they would get what they had said they wanted: to die in the wilderness. Their children, the ones they claimed would become victims, would go in instead. They would wander for forty years, “a year for each day” the scouts had spent in the land (Numbers 14:34). Only Caleb and Joshua would enter, because, God said, Caleb “has a different spirit and has followed Me wholeheartedly” (Numbers 14:24).

The next morning the people changed their minds and marched off to invade after all, without Moses, without the ark and against God’s word. They were beaten and chased back. It is a sad pattern you may recognise: refusing God when He says go, then charging ahead when He says stop. Both are ways of doing things on our own terms.

What the desert taught

The forty years were hard, but they weren’t wasted. God fed His people every morning with manna, and their clothes and sandals did not wear out. Moses later explained why He let them go hungry and then fed them: “so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). The wilderness was a school of trust.

At the end of the forty years the old generation had died. Moses, now very old himself, gathered their children on the plains of Moab, just across the Jordan River from the land, and preached the long farewell sermons that make up Deuteronomy (the name means “second law”, the law given again to a new generation). At its heart are words Jewish people still pray morning and evening, called the Shema, from the Hebrew for “hear”: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5).

The cure for the unbelief at Kadesh wasn’t just trying harder. It was love for God filling the whole of life, passed on in the ordinary moments: “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:7). Many Jewish homes still fix a little case holding these words to the doorframe. And when children asked why, parents were to tell the story: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand” (Deuteronomy 6:21). The ten scouts had forgotten. The new generation must “be careful not to forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 6:12). Next stop: the Jordan.

Where Jesus is in this

After His baptism, Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil” (Luke 4:1–2). Forty days for Israel’s forty years. Where Israel grumbled about bread, Jesus, hungry, answered the devil from this very part of the Bible: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). All three of His answers in Matthew 4 come from Deuteronomy. Jesus walked the road Israel failed on, and trusted His Father all the way. When He was asked which commandment matters most, He quoted the Shema (Mark 12:29–30). He is the one who loved God with all His heart, soul and strength, for us.

Hebrews uses the wilderness story as a warning and an invitation: “it was because of their unbelief that they were unable to enter” (Hebrews 3:19). So, it says, keep trusting Jesus and encourage one another daily, “as long as it is called today” (Hebrews 3:13).

Think about it: The ten scouts saw real giants and forgot a real God. What “giant” are you measuring at the moment, and how does it look when you measure it next to God?

Go deeper: The Way Into the Holiest by F. B. Meyer — writing on Hebrews 3, Meyer retells the wilderness years and argues that what kept Israel out of the land wasn’t the giants but unbelief, which starts with a murmuring, complaining heart; and he says that Christ Himself is the Promised Land we are invited into. Start with chapter 10, “A Warning Against Unbelief”.