🔢WEB · Numbers 14:45
What does Numbers 14:45 mean?
"Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites who lived in that mountain, and struck them and beat them down, even to Hormah."
— Numbers 14:45 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Don’t go up, for Yahweh isn’t among you; that way you won’t be struck down before your enemies.
For there the Amalekite and the Canaanite are before you, and you will fall by the sword, because you turned back from following Yahweh, therefore Yahweh will not be with you.”
But they presumed to go up to the top of the mountain. Nevertheless, the ark of Yahweh’s covenant and Moses didn’t depart out of the camp.
Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites who lived in that mountain, and struck them and beat them down, even to Hormah.
Explanation
Numbers 14:45 records a military defeat: when a group of Israelites tried to enter the Promised Land on their own initiative, the Amalekites and Canaanites living in the hill country attacked them, crushed them, and drove them back as far as a place called Hormah. In plain language, the verse describes a failed, unauthorized attempt at conquest that ended in disaster.
The context is essential to understanding why this happened. Numbers 13-14 tells the story of the twelve spies sent into Canaan, ten of whom returned with a fearful report about the land's inhabitants, causing the Israelites to despair and refuse to trust God's promise to give them the land. In response to their unbelief, God declared that this generation would not enter Canaan but would wander in the wilderness for forty years until they died off, while their children would eventually possess the land. Moses relayed this judgment to the people. Yet in verse 40, some of the Israelites, seemingly gripped by a sudden change of heart, declared "we will go up," and attemp
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