🔢WEB · Numbers 14:15
What does Numbers 14:15 mean?
"Now if you killed this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of you will speak, saying,"
— Numbers 14:15 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”
Moses said to Yahweh, “Then the Egyptians will hear it; for you brought up this people in your might from among them.
They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you Yahweh are among this people; for you Yahweh are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them, and you go before them, in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night.
Now if you killed this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of you will speak, saying,
‘Because Yahweh was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness.’
Now please let the power of the Lord be great, according as you have spoken, saying,
‘Yahweh is slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience; and he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation.’
Explanation
Numbers 14:15 comes from the middle of one of the most remarkable prayers of intercession in the Old Testament. In plain language, Moses is telling God: if you destroy this entire nation in one blow, right here in the wilderness, then the surrounding nations—who have already heard about Israel's God and his mighty acts—will draw a damaging conclusion about you. The sentence is left open because it flows directly into verse 16, where Moses spells out exactly what the nations would say: that the Lord was unable to bring Israel into the land he promised them, so he slaughtered them in the desert instead.
The context is essential to understanding the verse. The twelve spies had just returned from scouting Canaan, and ten of them gave a report so terrifying that the people despaired
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