Numbers 11 – The first of what
Schocken Bible editors call “rebellion
narratives,” [there will be six] the people become discontented in the year
following the second Passover celebration, angering God, so that “the fire of
the Lord burned among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp” (11:1).
Despite
the organization of the people and the establishment of a kind of community
order; despite the loving care of the Lord in providing manna and water for the
people, a spirit of discontent and
longing for the comforts of the life
of slavery in Egypt comes upon the people and angers the Lord. The immediate cause of the people’s
discontent is the memory of the good
foods they can no longer get: the meat, the cucumbers and melons. They are tired of the simple sustenance God
has provided them with. But beyond the
immediate causes, one senses that there is just a conflicted spirit in the
people.
They are
ambivalent about the freedom God has brought them into. The desire for freedom is not unequivocal. We desire also the
things that satisfy our appetites. If we
look into the universal meaning of this story we see that we too are not single
minded in our desire for the kind of freedom that comes from God.
As George
Fox puts it in his journal, “I
found there were two thirsts in me, the one after the creatures, to have
gotten help and strength there, and the other after the Lord the creator and
his Son Jesus Christ. And I saw all the
world could do me no good. If I had had
a king’s diet, palace, and attendance, all would have been as nothing, for
nothing gave me comfort but the Lord by his power. And I saw professors, priests, and people
were whole and at ease in that condition which was my misery, and they loved
that which I would have been rid of. But
the Lord did stay my desires upon himself from whom my help came, and my care
was cast upon him alone” (12).
We who are in the process of deliverance, the time of conversion
must be stayed upon the presence of the Lord and be satisfied with the simple
food he gives us. It may not be a feast at first; we may feel ourselves called strongly
by desires more superficial and more likely to lead us backward, but we should
not be surprised by our ambivalence either.
The people of Israel felt restless and ungrateful at times; they even
fell into complete apostasy. The time in
the desert is a time of drama, not a time of unceasing rejoicing. It is only the power of the Lord that can
bring us through.
The Lord tells Moses
to assemble 70 elders: “I will . . .take some of the spirit that is on you and
will bestow it on them, that they may share the burden of the people with
you. You will then not have to bear it
by yourself” (11:17).
But
he also tells him that He will provide meat for the people—for a month, until
they’re sick of meat (11:20). The sated appetite cloys after a while. Moses
doubts the Lord can bring them victory, seeing there are 600,000 soldiers.
The burdens
of leadership are dramatized throughout the story of Moses’ life—he is set
apart, he is alone, rejected by his people for trying to help them; he must run
away, yet his “call” to lead will not leave. He feels overwhelmed by the burden
God puts on him; he feels ill-equipped humanly speaking. He is asked to do the impossible—confront the
most powerful ruler on earth on behalf of an enslaved group of people. He must deal with the frustrations of
failure, the logistics of success and the burdens of leading; now he must contend with the venality of
the people he wants to save, and the
wrath of the God, who is angry that the people are ungrateful. He must wrestle with God for His support and
help on a number of occasions and later he will be challenged by others who
feel they too should share in leading, even by members of his own family. In the end, he will not even get to enjoy the
reward of entry into the land he has labored to bring his people into.
The
spirit does come down on the elders (11:25), but two men who had been asked to
come, were not there. Still the spirit came to them in camp, and they
prophesied [or as Schocken translates, “acted like prophets”]. Moses is told and people ask him to stop
them, but he says: “Would that all the
people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit
on them all!” (11:29). Then the quail come.
Irenaeus of Lyons
(c.180 AD)
Selections from the Work Against Heresies
Book III – The Faith
in Scripture and Tradition
The Unity and Number
of the Gospels – “These,
then, are the principles of the gospel. They declare one God, the maker of this
universe, who was proclaimed by the Prophets, and who through Moses established
the dispensation of the Law, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and besides
him they know no other God, nor any other Father.”
The
Gnostics know that the Gospels refute them. That is why they dispute them or
cut them up [Marcion]. The followers of Valentinus turn to John, but Irenaeus
repeats that the preface of John totally undermines Valentinus’ views.
Then he gets into a
little Christian “numerology” – he argues that there is a reason why there
are only four gospels; they correspond to the “four zones of the world in which
we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is spread over all the
earth, and the pillar and foundation of the Church is the gospel, and the
Spirit of life, it fittingly has four pillars, everywhere breathing out
incorruption and revivifying men.”
He
goes on to make reference to Psalm 80, thought to have been written by David,
to emphasize the “fullness” of the number four. He says, “the cherubim have
four faces, and their faces are images of the activity of the Son of God. For
the first living creature, it says, was like a lion, signifying his active and princely
and royal character; the second was like an ox, showing his sacrificial and
priestly order; the third had the face of man, indicating very clearly his
coming in human guise; and the fourth was like a flying eagle, making plain the
giving of the Spirit who broods over the Church. Now the Gospels, in which
Christ is enthroned, are like these.” This is “the first appearance of the
creatures of Ezek., ch. 1, and Rev. 4:7, 8, as symbols of the Evangelists;
later the lion is assigned to Saint Mark and the eagle to Saint John” (note in
online text).
The Gospel of John corresponds to the
first “face” – the lion – for he “signif[ies] his active and princely and royal
character.” The second, Luke, shows “his sacrificial and priestly order.”
Matthew, the man’s “face” tells of his human birth, and Mark represents the
eagle, for he “takes his beginning from the prophetic Spirit who comes on human
beings from on high, saying, ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as
it is written in Isaiah the prophet,’ showing a winged image of the
gospel.”
He
also points out that there were four
covenants “given to mankind: one was that of Noah’s deluge, by the bow; the
second was Abraham’s, by the sign of circumcision; the third was the giving of
the Law by Moses; and the fourth is that of the Gospel, through our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
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