Hypertext Bible

Tanach: Numbers (Bemidbar): Numbers (Bemidbar) Chapter 14

Book of AmosHebrew BibleTanakh

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is Numbers 14 from the Hebrew Bible (Torah), presented in both the original Hebrew script and its academic transliteration — a standard scholarly edition format. The chapter narrates the crisis of faith following the spies' reconnaissance of Canaan: the Israelite community weeps through the night, publicly mutinies against Moses and Aaron, and demands a leader to return them to Egypt. Joshua and Caleb, two of the spies, tear their garments and implore the people not to fear the land's inhabitants, arguing that God is with Israel and the Canaanites are defenseless before them. The congregation nearly stones them. God responds to the rebellion by threatening to annihilate the nation and replace it with Moses's descendants, but Moses intercedes, invoking God's own proclaimed attributes of patience and covenant loyalty — a direct quotation of the divine self-description from Exodus 34. God relents from destruction but decrees a forty-year desert wandering corresponding to the forty days of the spy mission, with all adults counted in the census condemned to die in the wilderness; only Caleb and Joshua are exempted. The chapter closes with the people attempting an unauthorized assault on Canaan the next morning, which Moses explicitly forbids as doomed without divine backing; they are routed by the Amalekites and Canaanites, confirming the judgment. The passage is theologically distinctive for its portrait of Moses as intercessor who restrains divine wrath by appealing to God's reputation among the nations rather than Israel's merit.

Tanach: Numbers (Bemidbar): Numbers (Bemidbar) Chapter 14

Related pages View as graph →