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The Wanderings
Sinai → Kadesh → Moab
What should have been a short march became forty years. When the people believed the spies who said the land could not be taken, that whole generation was left to die in the desert, until their children reached the plains of Moab.
Who walked it
- Moses
- Aaron
- Miriam
- Joshua
- Caleb
- Eleazar
The road
- Mount Sinai
- Kibroth-hattaavah
- Hazeroth
- Kadesh-barnea
- Mount Hor
- Ezion-geber
- Punon
- Dibon-gad
- Plains of Moab
Moments on the road
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The Graves of Craving
Kibroth-hattaavah · Numbers 11
Tired of manna, the people wept for the meat and melons of Egypt. The LORD sent quail off the sea, a day’s walk deep on every side, and with it a plague. They buried the craving where it rose, and the camp kept the name: the graves of craving.
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The Twelve Spies
Forty days, forty years · Numbers 13-14
From Kadesh twelve men went up to see the land, and came back carrying one cluster of grapes on a pole between two of them. Ten saw only giants and walls. Caleb and Joshua saw the promise. That night the people chose fear, and the forty days became forty years.
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The Waters of Meribah
Moses strikes the rock · Numbers 20
Back at Kadesh at the end of the years, Miriam died, and the water failed. Told to speak to the rock, Moses struck it twice in anger, and the water came anyway. For that moment of unbelief, the man who had carried Israel forty years would see the land only from a mountaintop.
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Aaron Gathered
The first high priest dies · Numbers 20
On the top of Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation, Aaron was stripped of his priestly garments and they were put on Eleazar his son. Aaron died there on the mountain, and Israel wept for him thirty days.
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The Bronze Serpent
Look and live · Numbers 21
Circling Edom by the Red Sea road, the people spoke against God and against Moses, and fiery serpents came among them. Moses raised a serpent of bronze on a pole, and whoever looked at it lived. Jesus would one day say the Son of Man must be lifted up the same way.
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Moses on Nebo
The view from Pisgah · Deuteronomy 34
From the top of Pisgah the LORD showed Moses the whole land, Gilead to the western sea, and said: I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over. Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, and no one knows his grave to this day.
At a glance
- Span
- About 1446 or 1260 BC, per dating view
- Duration
- Forty years in the wilderness
- Distance
- About 200 miles, Sinai to Moab
- Scripture
- Numbers 11 to 21, 33; Deuteronomy 34
- Stations
- Forty-two camps listed in Numbers 33
The story
Leaving Sinai, the people soon began to complain. They wept for the meat of Egypt and were buried at the graves of craving, and from Kadesh-barnea they sent twelve men to scout the land. Ten came back afraid, and the people refused to go up. So the LORD turned them back into the wilderness for forty years, one year for each day the spies had walked, until every grown man of that generation had died.
Even Moses and Aaron did not enter. At Meribah, told to speak to the rock, Moses struck it in anger, and for that he too was barred from the land. Aaron died on Mount Hor and Miriam at Kadesh, and the years wore the nation down. Snakes came among them when they grumbled again, and the LORD had Moses lift a bronze serpent on a pole, that all who looked to it might live.
The wilderness was where Israel learned who the LORD was, and who they were: a people kept alive by daily bread and forgiven again and again. The bronze serpent became a sign far beyond that day, for Jesus said that as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him might have eternal life. Moses saw the land from Nebo, then died in Moab.