Commentaries:
No entry exists in Forerunner Commentary for Numbers 16:12.
Numbers 16:12-15
Excerpted from: Sanctification and Holiness (Part 2)I want you to notice what an ironic and cruel twist that is given by these men. After all the evidence that God gave that He was working through Moses and Aaron, all that happened in Egypt, and all that happened after Egypt—the dividing of the Red Sea, water coming out of rocks, manna coming down out of heaven, and God killing all of those people in Egypt—what did these men do? In every case it was Aaron and Moses. I say Aaron first because Aaron was the spokesman who went before Pharaoh because Moses complained he could not talk well, but Moses was there I am sure.
What did these men do? Suddenly in their mind the description of Canaan becomes the description of Egypt—the place of their slavery, the place of their hard labor, the place of their bondage. "You took us out of the land flowing with milk and honey." Can you see how perverted and twisted their rationalizations had come? The level of that charge is ludicrous to the extreme, especially when it is understood that these are the very same people who refused to go into the land two chapters before and witnessed their fellow Israelites being killed by the enemy—a murder that they escaped because God gave grace to them. God is showing how perverted people's thinking can become when they begin coveting after something that He has not appointed them to.
In verse 12 they adamantly refused to appear before Moses. They mocked his words by repeating back to him what he said in verse 9 to the Levites: "Seem it but a small thing. . . " In verse 13 it says, "Is it a small thing that you have brought us up?" See. They are mocking it.
The use of the description of Canaan for Egypt. In verse 14 they accuse Moses of their plight in the wilderness. Here this man has been standing between them and death. How many times did he intervene with God and mediate before God in their behalf, and they blamed him that they were out in the wilderness?
In verse 13 they mock him as a strutting prince prancing about. That is what I meant in saying that maybe he was a little bit difficult to deal with. They said, "You make yourself altogether a prince over us."
They blame him that they do not possess the fields and vineyards of Canaan. They taunt him with a charge of abuse of power, that he attempts to blind others to his faults. That is what they mention when they say, "Will you put out the eyes of these men?" And then they repeat, "We will not come up."
Do you see what God has recorded here? God has recorded here that those who were not sanctified to the privilege and responsibilities of the priesthood were giving evidence in their twisted testimony, in their surly attitudes and uncooperative conduct, that they were not sanctified to it? But there is even more proof than that which is coming next week. I do not want to start now on the next portion of this because it involves quite a number of verses.
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Numbers 16:12:
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