Numbers 33:56

Verse 50 brings Israel’s long journey to its close. The chapter up to this point lists the places the people camped on the way from Egypt to Moab (Numbers 33:1–49), forty-two of them, and the whole list is a record of God leading his people every step. Now they are camped on “the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho”, on the east bank of the river, with the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob on the other side. The people who stand here are a new generation, born in the wilderness after their parents’ generation had passed away. Moses later speaks to them from this same place in the book of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 1:1, 1:5), and from here Joshua leads them down to the river (Joshua 3:1).

The place carries hard memories. Here in Moab, Balak sent for Balaam to curse Israel (Numbers 22:1–6), and here the people fell into the grievous sin at Peor (Numbers 25:1–9). Israel receives these commands about idols at the edge of the promise, after learning in this very region how much watchfulness faithfulness needs.

Jericho, Yᵉrîychôw, stood on the west side of the Jordan. It was a walled city and the first that Israel would face in Canaan, the city where the spies later found Rahab (Joshua 2:1–7). Naming it here points ahead to the conquest that these commands prepare for.

Verse 52 gives four commands, and each one reaches everything in its class.

“Drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you” uses yârash, which means to take possession of a place by driving out those who hold it. The same verb returns as “dispossess” and “possess” in verse 53 and as “drive out” in verse 55, so it ties the whole passage together.

“Destroy all their pictures” names the maskîyth, a carved or engraved figure used in worship. “Destroy all their molten images” names the maççêkâh, an idol cast from metal, which took real work and wealth to make, so that destroying one was a visible act of renouncing false gods. The verb for destroy is ʾibbaḏ, to wipe out completely, and “destroy” stands twice in this verse, pressing home that nothing is to be kept.

“Quite pluck down all their high places” names the bâmâh, a raised site, a natural hill or a built mound, where sacrifices and other rites were offered to the gods of Canaan. These sites were at the centre of Canaanite religion. The verb, shâmad, means to destroy or pluck down, so that the places themselves could never again be used for worship. Carved figures, cast idols and the places of worship together cover the whole of the false religion of the land.

Verse 53 gives the reason behind the commands: “for I have given you the land to possess it.” The verse opens and closes with yârash. Israel is to “dispossess” the inhabitants and then “possess” the land, and the one verb holds both, the driving out and the taking hold. The words “the inhabitants” are supplied by the translators to make the object plain.

The second verb, yâshab, means to sit down, and from that to dwell, remain or settle. After generations of living as sojourners and then as wanderers in the wilderness, Israel is to make its home in the land. The third, nâthan, is the common word for giving, used very widely (to give, put, set). God says “I have given”, and the gift comes first. Israel’s possessing of the land is their obedient answer to what he has already done. God told Joshua that he would give them every place where they set their feet (Joshua 1:2–3). A psalm looks back and says that Israel won the land by God’s hand and his favour and by no strength of their own (Psalm 44:2–3).

Canaan at this time was home to many peoples, among them the Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites, Perizzites, Hivites, Girgashites and Canaanites. The land God gives is held by others, and his people must act on his word to receive it. God’s gift and Israel’s obedience belong together in this verse.

Verse 54 tells how the land is to be shared out, and it gives two rules side by side. The lot decides where each portion lies, and the size of each family decides how large its portion is: “to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance.”

The lot, gôwrâl, was a marked object, such as a pebble, used to decide a question, and the same word names the portion that the lot decides. Israel cast lots as a solemn act, trusting God to direct the outcome. It took the choice out of human hands, so that no one could favour himself or his friends, and it showed that each family’s land came from God. A proverb says, “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). Once the lot had fallen, the matter was settled: “every man’s inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth.” That settled each family’s claim and spared Israel quarrels over its land. The book of Joshua records the land being divided in just this way.

The land is called an inheritance, naḥălāh, a word for an estate or portion handed down through the generations. In English the word “inheritance” runs right through the verse. The land was God’s gift in fulfilment of his promise to Abraham, and it was meant to stay in each family as its lasting share. The verse closes, “according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit”, so the land was divided within the twelve tribes descended from the patriarchs, and each generation’s portion was tied to the promises given to their fathers.

This one verse shows God caring for the daily life of his people. He sees to it that every family has land to live from, that large families are given room and small ones are given what they can use, and that land does not pile up in the hands of a powerful few. The God who rules the lot also cares about fairness.

Believers today ordinarily seek God’s leading through prayer, his Word, wise counsel and the Holy Spirit’s guidance, trusting the God who promises to instruct his people and guide them in the way they should go (Psalm 32:8).

Verse 55 turns from command to warning: “But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you”. The verb for “let remain”, yâthar, means to leave over or cause to remain. The people left in the land would be those whom Israel itself had left there.

God describes what they would become in two pictures. “Pricks in your eyes” are something sharp in the eye, a constant irritation that also spoils the sight, and the people left in the land would keep troubling Israel and cloud its view of God’s ways. “Thorns in your sides” are a deeper, lodged pain that goes on and on. Then comes the plain statement: they “shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.” The verb tsârar means to cramp or bind, to press into a narrow place, and so to harass and distress. The land God gave for rest would become a place of trouble, through moral temptation, raids from the people left behind, and confusion about whom to worship.

That is what happened. The first chapter of Judges records tribe after tribe that left the people of the land in place (Judges 1), and the angel of the LORD tells Israel that those nations will now be “thorns in your sides” (Judges 2:1–3), the very picture of this verse. A psalm looks back on the same failure and the suffering it brought (Psalm 106:34–40). The warning shows that partial obedience brings its own lasting trouble. Leaving a little of what God condemned in place gave it room to grow.

Verse 56 is the last and gravest word of the passage: “Moreover it shall come to pass, that I shall do unto you, as I thought to do unto them.” The verb “do”, ʻâsâh, is the broadest Hebrew word for doing or making. “Thought”, dâmâh, has a range from comparing and likening to considering and devising, and here it means what God had purposed. The “them” are the nations of Canaan. What God purposed for them was the loss of their land, so if Israel lived as they did, Israel would lose its land in the same way.

God speaks in the first person: “I shall do”. The judgment would be his own act. The law gives the same warning at length. The land that cast out its inhabitants for their sins would cast out Israel too if Israel defiled it in the same ways (Leviticus 18:24–28). The covenant’s blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience are set out in Leviticus 26 and in Deuteronomy 28:15–68. At the end of his life Joshua repeats the warning (Joshua 23), telling Israel that if they turned to other gods they would perish from the good land God had given them (Joshua 23:15–16). Israel’s later exile from the land is the fulfilment of this verse.

Israel’s journey from the wilderness into its inheritance points ahead to what God has done in Christ. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of a rest that still remains for the people of God, which believers enter through faith (Hebrews 4:9–11). As the LORD spoke to Moses to guide Israel into Canaan, God has now spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2), the Word made flesh (John 1:14). Moses was the mediator of the old covenant, and Christ is the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6). Moses brought Israel to the edge of the land, and Joshua, whose name is the Hebrew form of the name Jesus, brought them in. So the law brings us to see our need, and Jesus brings us into the inheritance. Whoever hears his word and believes has passed from death to life (John 5:24), and God has delivered us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his Son (Colossians 1:13). Jesus calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28).

The inheritance runs through the New Testament as well. Paul’s long praise of God’s blessings in Christ opens his letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 1:3–14). Israel received its land as a gift, and God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3).

Israel’s lot was God’s choice of where each family would live, and God chose his people in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4–5), and in Christ we have obtained an inheritance by the purpose of him who works all things after his own will (Ephesians 1:11). The Holy Spirit is the earnest, the pledge, of that inheritance (Ephesians 1:13–14). Christ is the mediator through whom those who are called receive “the promise of eternal inheritance” (Hebrews 9:15), an inheritance “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven” (1 Peter 1:4), secured by the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Canaan was divided among Israel’s families, and in Christ the Gentiles are “fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6), heirs of the promise to Abraham through faith (Galatians 3:29). Abraham himself looked for a city with foundations, whose builder is God (Hebrews 11:10), and Scripture ends with a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1–4), where the one who overcomes inherits all things (Revelation 21:7).

These seven verses show who God is. He brings his people to the end of a long road and speaks to them there, exactly as he promised their fathers. He gives the land before they lift a hand to take it, and he divides it fairly, down to the size of each family. He will share his people’s worship with no idol, because he means to dwell among them. And he tells them in advance, in plain words and vivid pictures, where compromise would lead. The same God has given us an inheritance in Christ that cannot fade, and his warnings to us, like his warning to Israel, come from a Father who wants his people to live at peace in what he has given them.