Big Idea: Leaders of God’s people are fallible.

Understanding the Text

Numbers here skips to the fortieth year after the Israelites left Egypt (see comments at Num. 20:1). Evidently, not much worth mentioning has happened in the intervening years. The Israelites had been condemned to forty years of wilderness wandering when they refused to enter the land of Canaan (Num. 14:33–34). By now, as predicted, most of those persons twenty years of age and older have died in the wilderness. Even the old leadership is dying off: both Miriam and Aaron die in this chapter (Num. 20:1, 28–29).

Dennis Cole sees three cycles of rebellion in Numbers:1

Rebellion Cycle A (Num. 10:11–15:41). Rebellions over manna, Moses’s marriage, and entering the land.

Rebellion Cycle B (Num. 16:1–19:22). Korah’s rebel…