The Death of Isra’el’s Leaders
20: 1-29
The story of Chapter 20 returns the reader to the forward movement of Isra’el’s camp after the interruption of the mitzvot of Chapter 15, rebellion of Chapter 16, and more mitzvot in Chapters 17 through 19. Numbers 20:1a reports that the whole community entered the Sin Desert in the first month, and they stayed in Kadesh. The people had traveled from Egypt in a southeasterly direction through the Sinai Peninsula to Mount Sinai. From there, they moved north to the southern edge of the Promised Land (to see link click Bv – The Sin of Kadesh-barnea), but they then turned back into the wilderness to wander for forty years. Numbers 20:1a places them once again at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, located in the northern-eastern part of the Sinai Peninsula. At this point in the story, the people are moving closer again to the Promised Land. Before the story resumes, virtually the entire Exodus generation had died. Of those who were over the age of twenty when the nation rejected the Land, only Moshe, Aaron, Joshua and Caleb remained alive.
However, just as Chapter 20 gets the march of Isra’el’s camp underway, it recounts a series of dramatic events that rock Isra’el to the core: the death of the leader Miryam; the rebellion against ADONAI by Moshe and Aaron; Ha’Shem’s command that Moses and Aaron would not lead Isra’el into the Promised Land; the refusal of the brother nation Edom to allow Isra’el safe passage through its territory; and the death of Aaron the high priest. This series of tragic blows again interrupts the reader’s sense of a moving story and a moving Israelite camp. After the lies of the spies (see By – The Report of the Spies), every time Isra’el gets up and recovers from one of its rebellions, it is interrupted again by accounts of mitzvot, rebellion, and death.392
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