Tuesday - Numbers 33 - Always More to Do

In the 40 years that the Jews wandered, they stopped at no less than 40 different campsites.  We know of some of the events that occurred at some of the locations, like Marah, Sinai & Hor, but what about many of the rest of the stops?  Why do all of the other dots on the roadmap matter?  Truly this isn't one of the more dramatic portions of the record. Yet, it is important. And, by the way... since they buried over a million Jews in the wilderness, it's a good thing they were moving around a lot. The general sanitary (and sane) condition of that Bedouin nation was preserved in part by their continual journeying. There certainly would have been even more problems if they had stayed in one place all of that time... going nowhere and doing nothing.

But, finally, after a long sequence of stops, Moses brought the Hebrews to their last campsite prior to their entry into Canaan. That had to have been an incredibly exciting time. Now, among the many other instructions that God commanded Moses to give to his followers, God made it abundantly clear what the modus operandi was to be. He told them, "Drive out all the inhabitants of the land... destroy their pictures, their images and tear down all their high places of worship... and divide the land among yourselves." Then He warned them, "If you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land; then those which you let remain will be pricks in your eyes, thorns in your sides and will vex you ... moreover... I shall do unto you, as I thought to do unto them."  Let it be said that God gave the people a fair warning.  As we read through the rest of the OT we are going to spend a whole bunch of time studying circumstances that resulted from nothing else but the refusal of the Jews to completely conquer their Canaanite enemies.