ONCE AGAIN THE JEWS SPENT MANY YEARS IN THE DESERT.OFTEN THEY LOST HOPE BUT MOSES UPHELD THEIR COURAGE WITH HIS VISION OF A PROMISED LAND.MOSES TAUGHT THEM MANY USEFUL THINGS BUT JUST BEFORE HE BROUGHT THEM TO THE LAND WHERE THEY HOPED TO FIND FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE,HE DIED
People often ask why the inhabitants of our slums do not leave their miserable homes and move into the open spaces of the great west,where a man can be his own master and can give his children a chance to grow up into healthy and strong human beings.
The answer is simple enough.
These poor creatures have become so accustomed to the comparative comforts of the city,that they fear to go forth into an unknown land where they must depend upon themselves for their livelihood.
In a town,all sorts of things are done for us by the unseen hands of the government.Even the poorest citizen can get all the water he needs by turning on a faucet.An immigrant,fresh from Ellis Island,can,if he is hungry and has a few pennies,run to a grocery store and buy himself a certain amount of food,neatly prepared and done up in convenient tin cans.
Out in the wilds,however,of an unsettled country,the pioneer must carry his own water from a nearby river.He must kill his own cattle.He must raise his own corn and potatoes.
Lots of people do not know how to do this.They are afraid to take a chance and learn.
And so they live and they die where they were born,and nothing short of actual starvation can make them move.
Human traits rarely change.The Jews of three thousand years ago were not very different from ourselves.They had been unhappy in Egypt because they had been subjected to horrible slavery.Now they were free,but once more they complained.They hated the desert and the sand and the heat;and soon they were all blaming Moses,who had taken them away from their Egyptian tenements to plunge them into a new life which frightened them more than the whips of the royal task-masters.
The story of the forty years in the desert is an endless chronicle of discontent.If it had not been for the unconquerable energy of Moses,the tribes would have returned to bondage before a year was gone.
Yet,during the first moment of exaltation,when the Jews saw their Egyptian enemies perish before their eyes,they knew a moment of triumph and happiness.
“Who is like Thee,O Jehovah?”they sang.“Who is like Thee among all the gods of the earth in glory and power?”
But when they had spent a few months among the endless hills of Sinai,they no longer thought of their God who had triumphed gloriously and who was their strength and their staff.Nay,they forgot all about him and only asked that they be taken back to the land from which he had just delivered them after such tremendous effort.
They cursed the intolerable wilderness and they openly expressed their disgust with Moses and his foolish plans.When provisions began to run low,they said that they were all surely going to die and they went to their leader and asked:“Give us to eat,or let us return.”
Moses,strong in his faith,told them that Jehovah would provide for them in their hour of need.
And behold!the next morning,they found the desert covered with small white flakes which could be beaten into a dough,and which made excellent cakes of a honey-like sweetness.The Egyptians,who knew this plant,had called it “mannu.”The Jews called it “manna”and they believed that Jehovah had grown it overnight for their own benefit.They gathered a fresh crop every day,except on the seventh day,when they celebrated the Sabbath and lived on the extra supply which they had laid in during the previous twenty-four hours.
Such signs of divine approval made the Jews more obedient for a short time.This mood,however,never lasted very long.Soon there was a lack of water.Again the heads of the different families went to Moses and asked that they might return to their old homes on the bank of the Nile.Moses then beat the rocks with his staff (as Jehovah had told him to do)and a rich stream of water gushed forth from the hard granite and they filled their pitchers and their bowls and their skillets and drank to their hearts’content.
Then they waited for a fresh cause for complaint.One fierce tribe of Arabs,called the Amalekites,was forever trying to steal the cattle of the Jews.Of course,they could have resisted these robberies,for they were strong enough to defend their own.But,as I have said often before,they had lived for such a long time behind the sheltering walls of the cities that they were afraid of arrows and swords.They would rather lose a few sheep and donkeys than go forth to battle.This of course encouraged the Amalekites and they harassed the Jewish caravan until Moses decided that something must be done to make an end to this wholesale theft.He called Joshua to him,whom he knew as a brave young man,and whom he had entrusted with some special mission upon several previous occasions.
“Drive away the Amalekites,”Moses told him.
Joshua obeyed orders and left the camp with a few volunteers.As soon as he was gone,Moses lifted up his arms toward Heaven and as long as his arms were stretched out over his troops,Joshua,with the help of Jehovah,was successful.But when Moses grew tired and allowed his arms to drop,then the Amalekites returned and fell upon the Jews and killed many of them.
When they saw this,Aaron and Hur supported the aching arms of their leader,and towards the evening,the Amalekites had been completely defeated and Jehovah had given the victory to his faithful followers.
Soon afterwards the caravan reached the land of Midian,where the father-in-law of Moses lived.The old man was very happy to see his relatives once more.He offered a sacrifice to express his gratitude to Jehovah,whom he too worshipped as the sole ruler of Heaven and earth,and he allowed his son Hobab to join the Jews when they marched northward,that he might act as their guide.
