Oops

Numbers 14:1 - 15:41

Imagine what it would have been like to have been Joshua or Caleb.
You spent 40 days exploring the land God has promised to you...you have the eyes of faith so you're seeing only the positive. A land flowing with milk and honey, rich grape harvest, exceedingly good. The people who live there look big, their cities fortified, but you see them as just so many weeds for the Lord to clear out of the way.
We don't know from the text but it may be possible that these two guys were so caught up in the good about to happen that they weren't even aware that the other 10 were afraid of what they'd seen. They probably were in deep conversation with each other making plans on what they conquest would look like...especially given Joshua's position as a military leader.
Then you get back, ready to spread the good news...and your ten compadres start spreading the bad news. Spreading it so quickly in fact that the camp is up in arms by nightfall.
You try to sway the opinion of the crowd but you're shouted down, the crowd, many of whom are extended family, threaten to stone you.
Then the Lord shows up.
Moses intercedes on behalf of the people so that God doesn't kill them all...it isn't the first time incidentally that God offers to rebuild the nation from Moses, offering him what was originally offered to Abraham.
God forgives the people but pronounces punishment...40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
I would be pissed.
I'd be somewhat gladdened by the fact that God killed off the other 10 guys...although I would have been asking for permission to do it myself...I'd be happy that I did get to make it into the promised land but I'd be BUMMED that my kids would be adults with kids of their own before we ever got there and honestly angry that while I was making the right decision I was being punished right along with the folks who had no faith.
To be standing there, literally looking back over your shoulder at the promised land just waiting for you to seize it, knowing that it will be forty years of wandering and eating mana before you come back to take what you should have now...that would kill me.
The fact that these two make it for forty years without turning their backs on God speaks WAY more to me about their faith than does the episode with the other spies.
Well worth praying through and learning from in terms of patience and my own limited perception of justice...