Numbers 21:4: “And the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.”
Maybe I am the odd one out, but I keep hearing all these testimonies about people who walk a tough road and how God sends miracle after miracles to deliver them. How God supports them and gets them through. For me, I grow weary of the journey, I get tired of being the good soldier. Like David I envy the eagle who just needs to flap his wings and fly away from it all. I suppose David often contemplated writing a simply note saying: like the Rain Maker in the Broadway play, 110 In The Shade, who one day just disappeared leaving behind the note that said Exit the rainmaker.
We really tend to throw rocks at Israel during their wanderings in the wilderness and marvel at God’s patience with them. In Numbers 21 we learn that during their journey the Canaanites attacked them and took some of them prisoners. In verse 3 we find that they cried out to God and He gave them a great victory. Yet, in the very next verse we learn that “the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.”
Our modern translations render the word qasar (discouraged) three ways, impatient, weary, and discouraged. One translation renders the word as short. In modern English each of these words carries very different meanings. It is very important that understand just what the people were feeling because many of us also believe we are wandering in the wilderness and not really handling it well and we need to know if we are falling into the same sin as Israel. If we are just discouraged, perhaps God will understand. If are weary that is also understandable, but if we are impatient, that does not sound good.
First the word used here for discouraged is qasar which is in a qal future form. The word can mean impatient, it could also mean discouraged, to cut down, reap, short, deficient, unable, grieved, or passionate. As this is in a qal future form I would have to rule out the words impatient, passionate and grieved. This would leave the words discouraged, cut down, reap and unable. The word reap would have little application in this context. For me the word discouraged would embody the idea of being cut down or unable. Thus, I would consider the best rendering to be discouraged. The word is spelled Qof, Sade, Resh. The ancient sages at one time or another has associated each of these three letters with self-righteousness.
Israel was growing discouraged in the way. The word way is dereck which means journey both spiritual and physical. I think many of us have become very discouraged in our journey. We have become discouraged (quasar) for the same reason as Israel, we have become self-righteous. We have experienced many miracles from God, many deliverances and now the journey is really getting rough and we feel discouraged because God has not delivered us like He has done in the past. Like Israel, we have been faithful, We have left Egypt, we have worshipped God and praised Him. We have known His miracles, and we somehow get the idea that this makes us something special and we deserve a miracle more than someone else, we’ve earned it, after all we’ve brown nosed God more than anyone else. Like Israel we are saying that we are one of God’s people. WE DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS. In truth we have become self-righteous, thinking we deserve better treatment than the next person simply because we do all these little favors for God. We have the Kings ear, we are His friend, His child. He obviously loves us more than our neighbor who swears, drinks and beats his wife. I mean with all our fancied holiness we should be getting special attention. After sitting through some religious service for an hour a week and throwing our hard earned money in some offering plate if that does not get God’s attention then what should? Right? He has to love us more than that slob next door. So when we get ourselves in some crisis, it is time for God to pay up.
Well, we do get special attention. Like Paul we can share in the suffering of Jesus. I remember a rabbi once told me how he loves to enter into silence, for in silence he can hear the world cry. I spent a week in silence which I document in my book, Hebrew Word Study, A Hebrew Teacher’s Call to Silence. The other day a friend suggested I probably needed to spend some more time in silence again. I am taking that advice and I have rented a cabin in the Catskill mountains for week coming this fall, yet I figured I needed to enter some silence right now. So yesterday I parked my disability bus parking in a rather run down area of Chicago where I had to wait for a passenger who was in therapy and I quietly cried out to God to speak to me, to show Himself to me. I heard nothing. I told God all I ever wanted was to know His heart. He said nothing, He was silent. But then I did hear something. Not audible, but deep in my heart. I looked at a woman sitting on a bench across the street waiting for who knows what. In my heart I heard her weeping, I felt her loneliness. I saw another man, obviously homeless sitting on the ground in entrance of an abandoned building with his head down. I suddenly felt his despair. No wait, I realized I was not feeling this despair and loneliness from them, I was feeling it from God who was feeling it from them. It wasn’t the weeping of the people I heard, it was God’s weeping. I felt I heard Jesus saying: “I have given you special attention, I have given you the best, I have allowed you to enter my heart. You wanted to enter into my heart, now you have. Now you feel what I feel as I look upon those that I love just as much as you? There are many rooms in my heart. You’ve enjoyed some of my more joyful rooms, but now I am letting you share a very private room with me. Do you still want to enter my heart?”
DO I?
I worked so hard for Jesus
I often boast and say
I’ve sacrificed a lot of things
To walk the narrow way,
I gave up fame and fortune,
I’m worth a lot to thee,
But then I heard him say so tenderly.
I left my throne in glory
And counted it but loss
My hands were nailed in anger
Upon a cruel cross.
So now we’ll take this journey
With your hand safe in mine,
Just lift your cross and follow close to me.
-Ira Stanfill –
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