At one level, the brief account in Numbers 17 wraps up the report of the rebellions in the previous chapter. God wishes to rid himself of the constant grumbling of the Israelites as they challenge Aaron’s priestly authority (17:5). So the staff of the ancestral leader of each tribe is carefully...
Published 05/09/24
Two more wretched episodes of rebellion now blemish the history of the Israelites in the wilderness (Num. 16).
The first is the plot engineered by Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. They stir up trouble not among the riffraff, but among a sizable number of community leaders, about 250 of them. The heart...
Published 05/08/24
Guilt. What a horrendous burden.
Sometimes people carry a tremendous weight of subjective guilt — i.e., of felt guilt — when they are not really guilty. Far worse is the situation where they carry a tremendous weight of objective guilt — i.e., they really are guilty of some odious sin in the...
Published 05/07/24