Numbers 20:1 Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month… 1. The abiding in Kadesh. This was a return to the district occupied at the time when God pronounced the doom of wandering for forty years on the people (Numbers 13:26). We know also that the return took place as this long period was drawing to a close. There had been, so to speak, a profitless and melancholy wandering in a circle. We have but little information concerning this period, and what we have seems to have been given for the purpose of showing now rigorously God carried out the sentence. Chapter 33, tells us of the various halting-places, as if to impress us with the fact that Israel had not been allowed to go out of the wilderness. We are told of the rebellion of Korah and the giving of certain laws, but there is nothing to indicate progress. Probably, as has been suggested, there was more or less of dispersion during the forty years. God was waiting for an obstacle to be taken out of the way. In the Scriptures we do not find anything recorded unless as it bears on the advancement of the kingdom of God. Much of what the world calls history is after all mere trifling, and it is our wisdom and profit to notice not only what God has revealed, but also what he has concealed. This generation of the Israelites was thus a type of the many profitless lives that are lived in every generation. After a period of wandering and toil they come back to where they started from. There is nothing to show for all the years of weary work. Sadder still, there are many who come to be looked on as obstacles; their life stands in the way of human improvement and advance, and little or nothing can be done till they go. The return to Kadesh was like some great sign that a long and rigorous winter is drawing to its close. 2. The death of Miriam. There is a certain fitness in following up the regulations of chapter 19 with a record of death and burial. Death had dogged these Israelites all through their wanderings. There was perhaps no halting-place but what might have had this sentence joined with it: "Such a one died there and was buried there." Why then is the death of Miriam singled out for special mention? In the first place, she was a person of distinction by her office as prophetess, particularly as she was not only a prophetess, but sister to the two chief men in Israel. Then, being so, it is very noticeable that none of the three, so eminent in their life, were allowed to enter the promised land. There is mystery in their calling, mystery in the services they are called to render, and mystery in the seeming thwarting of all their hopes. One feels the hand of God is in all this. Man proposes, and reckons with something like certainty, but God disposes in a very different fashion. Miriam had sinned a great sin (chapter 12), but was it not a long while ago? She has lived on through all these wanderings, having seen many younger than herself falling on every hand. May she not then hope to live a little longer, and see the promised land before she dies? Perhaps such thoughts were in the aged woman's mind, perhaps many a time she had wept bitterly over her pride and envy in the past; but God's determinations cannot be set aside, and even when the earthly Canaan is again coming in sight, that sight is not for her. There was no way for Miriam, any more than the rest of us, to escape that suffering and loss in this world which so often come from wrong-doing. As to her possible part in the better country, there is necessary silence here. It is Christ who brought life and immortality to light. The great thing to be noticed is that Miriam died in Kadesh, was buried there, and consequently failed of entrance into the earthly Canaan. - Y. Parallel Verses KJV: Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. |
    |