Year 7, Day 147: Numbers 32

Theological Commentary: Click Here

When I read this chapter, I discover another example of a teaching that it took me several years of my adult life to embrace.  We cannot only judge people by their actions and their words.  We need to know their heart, their inner motivations, before truly knowing whether something that they do is right or wrong.  It is so much easier to create a static list of rights and wrongs and then judge people by where their actions fall.  But this is not effective and true.  I can’t tell a person’s sin just by what they do.  I need to know them, first.

How do we see this in the story?  Some of the Hebrew people see the land east of the Jordan river and ask Moses if they can settle there instead.  Moses immediately hears their words and compares them to the sinful generation who were afraid to follow God into the Promised Land.  Moses remembered the decision that kept him wandering through the desert for forty years, and this request sounds suspiciously like that fateful day.  Moses intercedes, reminding the people who are making this request about the failings of their parents.

This generation, however, surprises us.  Once Moses takes the time to get to know their motives, he figures out that they are making the request because they genuinely like the land.  They aren’t afraid to go into the land and conquer it!  They will do their duty willingly.  They simply like this particular area of fertile ground.

In this we learn the value of knowing the human heart.  There are a host of reasons to not want to cross into the Promised Land.  Some of them are genuine as we see in this chapter.  Some of them could be disingenuous as we see at the beginning of the wandering in the desert.  If all we did is look at the action, we might easily mistake one for the other.

This is ultimately why relationship is important.  If we are not careful, we sit off in a distance and judge people as they go by without knowing anything about their life.  We make assumptions and rationalize our judgmental nature.  What relationship does is to help mitigate this cold and distant permission to judge.  Relationship teaches us to know people and walk life in their shoes.  Once we get to know people and not just observe them, we are far more equipped to be God’s influence in the world.

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