Faithless Israelites scared of a few giants

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

‘We saw Nephilim there. (The descendants of Anak are Nephilim.) We felt as small as grasshoppers, and that’s how we must have looked to them’.

 

Numbers 13:33

 

Only Jesus Christ can lead us into the Promised Land (Acts 4:12): “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved”.

 

Metaphorically speaking, the Israelites would be led into the Promised Land by a Jesus - at least, by a warrior with a Jesus name, Joshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ), meaning “The Lord will save”. The name Jesus (יֵשׁוּעַ) means, similarly, “He will save”.

 

Metaphorically, again, it would not have been fitting for Moses to have led the Israelites into the Promised Land because Moses embodied the Law (Torah), and the Law alone was never sufficient to save Israel (cf. Romans 7:13-24).

 

As Ike Clanton said to Wyatt Earp, ‘Law don’t go around here, Kansas Law Dog’.

 

However, before Joshua can even begin his assault on the fortified Early Bronze III (EB III) cities of the land of Canaan, he will encounter the real leader of the army of Israel, a prefigurement of Jesus Christ – the Old Testament ever seeking its fulfilment in the New (Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 129): “Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen”.

 

Joshua 5:13-15:

 

When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and demanded, ‘Are you friend or foe?’

‘Neither one’, he replied. ‘I am the commander of the Lord’s army’.

At this, Joshua fell with his face to the ground in reverence. ‘I am at your command’, Joshua said. ‘What do you want your servant to do?’

The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy’. And Joshua did as he was told.

 

Joshua and Caleb

 

All but two persons from amongst the horde of adult Middle Bronze I (MBI) people who had departed from the land of Egypt under the leadership of Moses will ultimately enter into the Promised Land: namely, Joshua and Caleb.

The number of those who had marched off into the desert wilderness appears to have been wildly exaggerated, due to a rigid interpretation of the Hebrew word, elef (אֶלֶף), as “thousand”. Assuredly “thousand” is one of the word’s various meanings - but when a translation leads to a situation that greatly stretches common sense, one ought to consider searching for a different meaning.

Sadly though, as we well know, ‘common sense is not so common’ (Voltaire).

 

The usual estimation of two million Israelites, 600,000 fighting men, wandering in a moon-scape like, waterless, desert, is well beyond the realms of likelihood.

 

The number was probably closer to 60,000 in total - still a great horde.

 

Had Israel really been able to boast of 600,000 fighting men, the same size as Napoleon’s Grande Armée, then they would have been able to laugh at any opposition – giants included.

 

Moses, stationed at Kadesh-barnea, had selected 12 men to enter into, and to spy out, the Promised Land - one man from each of the 12 tribes of Israel (Numbers 13:1-29).

 

Like the 12 Apostles commissioned by Jesus Christ, these chosen leaders of Israel were meant to prepare the way for the ultimate Conquest of the land.

 

However, the faithless spies - all but Joshua and Caleb - returned quaking in their sandals. Yes, here was a land flowing with milk and honey, with abundant grapes, too, pomegranates and figs, but we saw the Anakim, giants who made us seem as small as grasshoppers.

 

These giants had turned our Hebrew warriors into a heap of worriers.

 

(Vv. 27-29): “This is what they reported to Moses: ‘We went to the land where you sent us. It really is a land flowing with milk and honey. Here’s some of its fruit. But the people who live there are strong, and the cities have walls and are very large. We even saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev. The Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the mountain region. And the Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and all along the Jordan River’.

 

Joshua (from Ephraim) and Caleb (from Judah), though, were having none of it.

They, like the young David when confronted with the giant Goliath, were convinced that they could win the victory with the Lord on their side. Big is not always better.

They had sufficient faith - the ten other Israelite spies did not.

 

(Vv. 30-33) “Caleb told the people to be quiet and listen to Moses. Caleb said, ‘Let’s go now and take possession of the land. We should be more than able to conquer it’.

But the men who had gone with him said, ‘We can’t attack those people! They’re too strong for us!’ So they began to spread lies among the Israelites about the land they had explored. They said, ‘The land we explored is one that devours those who live there. All the people we saw there are very tall. We saw Nephilim there. (The descendants of Anak are Nephilim.) We felt as small as grasshoppers, and that’s how we must have looked to them’.”

 

Owing to their faith, the pair, Joshua and Caleb, incredibly, would be the only ones amongst the whole mass of adult people that had departed from Egypt who would ultimately enter the Promised Land, after 40 years of wandering. For the Lord had concluded a marvellous dialogue with Moses (and Aaron) by declaring (v. 34): ‘For 40 days you explored the land. So for 40 years—one year for each day—you will suffer for your sins and know what it means for Me to be against you’. 

 

That ‘wandering’, though, needs to be put into perspective.

 

Israel was not constantly roaming aimlessly around the Sinai and Negev deserts, but was situated, for the most part, at the oasis of Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat), where, not surprisingly, there is to be found a large concentration of MBI sites:

 

… there is a large concentration of sites along the geomorphic line that runs from the Kadesh-Barnea region to north of Dimona. ….   

….

The concentration of MBI sites in the relatively fertile district east of Kadesh-Barnea recalls the tradition that the Israelites encamped near this oasis for 38 of their 40 years of wandering after leaving Egypt (Deuteronomy 1:46).

(Rudolph Cohen, “The Mysterious MBI People”, BAR, July/August 1983).