The fear-mongering of chapter 13 has worked and the rabble is sufficiently roused. The people weep and wail and grumble against Moses and Aaron (a familiar tactic from not only this journey but also the journey from Egypt to Mt. Sinai). Keeping consistent with the form of their greatest hits (grumblings) from those episodes, they ask why YHWH would bring them this far to die in the wilderness by the sword of their enemies. Why would He do such a thing to their wives and children? Isn’t it better that we go back to Egypt? Now, obviously the answer is that YHWH wouldn’t do that so they should proceed and trust His promises in the matter. But, of course, that isn’t what they do. They conclude that they should choose a new leader (take that, Moses!) and head on back to Egypt under their own volition.
Moses and Aaron recognize a straight-up rebellion when they see it and fall on their faces. The two spies who tried to calm the situation down, Joshua and Caleb, tear their clothes (a strong lament). This is a good reminder for wise men recognize trouble and weep for it. Perhaps we run the risk of being too passive at the evil and rebellion we see in our midst (and even in our own lives). Caleb and Joshua try re-engage the people, begging them not do this thing and to trust in God’s word and provision. In reaction to this faithful and reasonable plea, the people decided it would be best to kill them with stones. YHWH will stand for this no more and His glory (presence) appears at the tent of meeting. Kind of the ultimate, “Just wait ’til your Father gets here” kind of moment.
God asks Moses a few rhetorical questions that make it clear that He’s had enough of their rebellion. “How long will this people despise me? How long will they not believe in me in spirte of all the signs that I have done among them?” Moses, wisely, does not interject at this point. YHWH’s conclusion is that He wants to start over, that these people will be struck with a plague, disinherited of all His promises, and that He will start over with a new nation from Moses’ line. This isn’t the first time that God has determined that His purposes shan’t be thwarted by a rebellious group and that it was better to start over with the line of a faithful fella. There are obvious flood story overtones here.
Moses, as he has done multiple times now, intercedes for the people. In fact, this is pretty much the same conversation he and YHWH had after the golden calf episode in Exodus 32. Moses makes the case that this people is supposed to be an example to the nations, and by wiping them out that foreign peoples may believe that God wasn’t capable of delivering His people. Further, Moses reminds YHWH of His description of His own character, that He is “…slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love…”, which was also an outcome of that same calf situation (Exodus 34). Moses’ plea for the people works, Like in Exodus, it’s probably not right to see this as God being “talked out of” what He intended to do. It’s basically the means for which God points out what the just consequences are so that the extent of His mercy can be rightly understood.
Still, there will be consequences. When it says, “…visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and fourth generation”, it’s kind of an idiom that means that God will not allow iniquity to go unpunished. It doesn’t mean that the punishment of the first generation will get extended beyond that generation as a curse or something, it just means that God will continue to follow through with the punishment for as many generations as are guilty of it. I know it reads oddly to us, we want to hold it to a literal count, but that’s not the intent.
So YHWH tells Moses the consequences. Ultimately, He’s not going to wipe them out. However, they didn’t want to go into the land, so they won’t be allowed to. They wanted to head back to Egypt, and He’s going to grant that, too. They wanted to go back to the wilderness? Done. And they will die there, a whole generation of them. The same set of fellas that were counted as the “army” at the start of the book (age 20 and up) will be turned away from this promised land and wander 40 years (a year for each day they were spies in the land). Of the spies themselves, only Joshua and Caleb will survive and get to enter the land. The rest of the spies who riled up the people with their false report from the land, will die immediately via plague. The only thing YHWH doesn’t grant them is their complaint that He has brought their children into risk. Instead, the opposite occurs, their kids will be allowed to enter the land YWHH promised once the whole nation has done enough wandering to outlast the most hearty of the rebellious adults.
So YHWH tells them to head out the next day for the wilderness by way of the Red Sea. In a remarkable turn of extended foolishness, they refuse this instruction and instead head up to the heights of the hill country (basically into the promised land). They’ve decided that they will demonstrate their repentance by disobeying YHWH’s command to go to the wilderness and instead follow through with trying to conquer Canaan. This is a classic move, well known to every pre-teen who, upon being grounded for not picking up their room, contends that all is well and should be forgiven now that they are cleaning their room. But obviously their heart is still not reacting in faithfulness to God, it’s an attempt to re-secure the earthly blessing they so foolishly rejected the day before. Moses attempts to convince them that this isn’t going to work and they are going to eat their hats at the hands of the land’s inhabitants if they go in there without God. “Do not go up, for YHWH is not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies.”
They ignored Moses and went into the land without the cloud (presence of YHWH) leading them there. As a result, they were defeated and chased out of the land by the Canaanites and the Amalekites.