The Prophecy Of The Ten Spies

FULL MEETING WITH MIDRASH HERE

NOTE: THE TRANSCRIPT IS NOT EXACTLY LIKE THE RECORDING.

Few people realize this Torah Portion, the specific account of the 10 spies, has a prophetic fulfillment in the end of days.

Num 13:1  Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 

This would, as it turned out, to be the last test in the wilderness YHVH was willing to put up with.

Here have been the other tests:

1. Will Yahweh save us from Pharaoh? Exodus 14:10-14 (at the Red Sea)
2. Will Yahweh provide water? Exodus 15:22-24, and 17:4 (on the way to Mount Sinai)
3. Will we be angry toward Yahweh and doubt He will provide food? Exodus 16:2-3 (on the way to Mount Sinai)
4. Will we doubt that YHVH among us? Exodus 17:1-7 (on the way to Mount Sinai)
5. Is Yahweh the one and only, true Elohim? Exodus 32:1-8 (golden calf)
6. Will we complain about Yahweh’s provision? Numbers 11:4-6 (we don’t like this manna!)
7. Will we expect YHVH to satisfy our flesh? Numbers 11:13 (quail)
8. Will we reject Yahweh Himself? Numbers 11:20 (YHVH said they had rejected through the quail test)
9. Will we reject Yahweh’s Anointed? Numbers 12:1-2 (Aaron and Miriam’s complaint)

And now, the last test:

10. Will we reject YHVH’s Kingdom and Him as King by rejecting His royal land grant (which is His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and then make plans to return to Egypt? Numbers 13:1 – 14:4?

YHVH does not allow His people to test Him out of doubt and fear. Yet, He has been patient with these people 9 times as they tested Him.

Here is what we are allowed to do: we are allowed to confirm what He tells us. Fleeces. We are allowed to ask how He will do something as long as that question is not driven by doubt and fear but rather by acceptance of His Word and excitement about its fulfillment. That’s how Abraham approached his question about how he will know YHVH would give him a son.

But never through rebellion, fear (whether real or because of unwillingness to obey) are we to test Him. YHVH always knows when the heart rebels and the lips lie through excuses.

There is more to this 10-spies incident than meets the eye. Numbers 13:2 indicates only that Moses sent the men. It does not explain why. Here is why:

Deu 1:22  You [the Israelite leaders] came near to me [Moses], every one of you, and said, “Let’s send men before us, that they may search the land for us, and bring back to us word of the way by which we must go up, and the cities to which we shall come.”

People have wondered and speculated why YHVH sent these men. Deuteronomy 1:22 answers that question. He didn’t send them. They asked to go, and they asked to go out of hard hearts.

The Israelites knew YHVH was leading them to the Promised Land but their hard hearts were already rejecting their inheritance, the royal land grant given to Abraham’s descendants.

Would YHVH give his children a piece of land and then not plan to clear the land of what doesn’t belong there? YHVH had already promised them:

Exo 3:8  I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

Exo 3:17  and I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, to a land flowing with milk and honey.”’

AND…

Exo 13:11  “It shall be, when Yahweh shall bring you into the land of the Canaanite, as he swore to you and to your fathers, and shall give it you,
Exo 13:12  that you shall set apart to Yahweh all that opens the womb, and every firstborn that comes from an animal which you have. The males shall be Yahweh’s.

Was it that they did not want to set apart their firstborn for YHVH? By this time, the firstborns had been replaced with the Levites because of the failure of the firstborns at the golden calf. They either did not stop the image worship or they fully participated in it. 3,000 people died when YHVH killed them. So were the hard-hearted Israelites keeping a grudge against YHVH and the rejection of His Promise without question was their passive aggressive way of showing it?

We are not to question YHVH’s gifts to us. We are to accept them, but that first generation wanted to inspect it first, to ascertain if it met THEIR expectations. That is rejection of YHVH’s royal land grant.

They were, at this moment, camped in the wilderness of Paran (Numbers 12:16) on the east side of the Jordan river. From there, they traveled through the wilderness of Zin to launch their search (Numbers 13:21). These are the areas where Edom and Moab were located and where they are still located. These wildernesses are not referred to now as Paran and Zin. And unlike most Bible maps which often put both of the wildernesses on the west side of the Jordan river stretching down into the Sinai Peninsula, they were actually on the east side of the river in Jordan and specifically at Kadesh-Barnea, in the area of Petra. Edomite Territory.

The wilderness of Zin is further north and east of the Jordan river extending even into Gilead in Jordan’s north.  This is where the territory of the Moabites was. These 2 wildernesses also overlapped each other.

From Bible.ca.

The Israelites were at Kadesh-Barnea for this incident because it says in Numbers 13:26 that is where the spies returned to present the slander against the land.

These two locations are the reason there is prophecy for the end of days, according to Ezekiel 20. What happened here in the wildernesses of Paran and Zin set the stage as the reason Ezekiel 20:33-38 says YHVH will test His end times people again in the “wilderness of the peoples”, the same geographic area. “The peoples” are a reference to different kinds of peoples: Israelites and non-Israelites like Ishmaelites, Edomites and Moabites who lived there.

This is why YHVH will protect these areas from the King of the North in the end of days.

Dan 11:41  He [the King of the North] will enter also into the glorious land, and many countries will be overthrown; BUT these will be delivered out of his hand: Edom, Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. 

Ammon is south of Gilead but will still suffer under the invasion of the King of the North. Only the “chief” (and probably his family) will escape Iran’s attack. However, Edom (which was located in Ishmael’s Wilderness of Paran) and Moab which occupied some of the Wilderness of Zin will completely escape Iran, the King of the North.

And some of those end times people, He says, will not be allowed to go into Israel with Him.

Why might that happen? There will likely be several factors but the biggest will be because the King of the North will still have possession of the land. Again, there will be the reluctance to go in and take the land when Yeshua wants to lead us across the river like Joshua did.

Joshua had led the Israelites to the south of Jericho. And then war ensued. The war Yeshua will face will be Armageddon. Yeshua will lead His “heavenly armies” (Revelation 19:14), which will include the 144,000, to ultimate victory there.

But there will be people who will be fearful, cowardly, and won’t go in to possess the land with Yeshua just as this first generation would not go in to possess the land with Moses.

There was no reason for an Israelite reconnoiter mission. YHVH already knew who was there. He already knew the land was fruitful. He needed His people to trust Him!

Let’s talk about their excuse – fear. The fearful will not inherit the Kingdom (Revelation 21:8).

For fear of big men, Anakim, they slandered YHVH! But the Anakim were just the excuse. They had walked out of Egypt and faced Pharaoh and been delivered by YHVH. They had faced Amalek and had been delivered by YHVH. Thus, this was an excuse. What was really going on is that they did not want to be beholden to YHVH’s Law because of living in His land. They did not want to live by His Law. They wanted to live by Egyptian Law.

Staying in the Moabite territory was more appealing to the Israelites than crossing the river for more than just the fact that the Anakim were so big. The Moabites had a culture the Israelites could live with!

The Moabites were vassals of Pharoah but the Moabites also had their own laws and their own gods (which Israel will soon meet) and it was this which Israel was choosing over YHVH’s ways! They chose religion over Kingdom. That has always been the choice.

Only 2 of the 12 (0.16%) of the tribes, or just about halfway between 1/10th (a tithe of the remnant) and 20%, stood for YHVH’s Kingdom. That was Joshua and Caleb.

YHVH did NOT need their opinion of His gift to them! They prevented Him from fulfilling, in that generation, His promise to Abraham. It is a very bad thing to stand in the way of YHVH fulfilling a promise!

Num 13:32  They brought up an evil report of the land which they had spied out to the children of Israel, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people who we saw in it are men of great stature.

“Evil report” is the Hebrew word “dibah” (Strong’s H1681). Its better translation is “slander”. They brought a slander against the YHVH by literally saying His gift to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob would be a bad place for them. These men not only threw YHVH’s land grant back in His face, but they were saying that He did not live up to His promise or His greatness! What these men said is that the land is sub-standard and not worthy of THEM! It turns out, though, that THEY were not worthy of the land.

Before I knew anything about the Torah, I always envisioned the Israelites as a grateful and happy people for having been rescued from their oppression and trials. That’s what I was taught. The reality, I discovered later when I began to study the Torah, is that the descendants of Abraham Isaac and Jacob were ungrateful and hateful and self-interested people. This is not to say they were this more so than the nations. Rather, they were just like the nations preferring other gods over the One who was the Creator of all things, including those angelic beings who fell from Heaven and then made themselves into worship-able deities. Mankind has fallen for this from the time of Eve in the garden and Adam who had the authority to override her decision and did not.

God help us! We are still this way today, and worse!