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23. Continuation of
the Journey through the Desert.
So the descendants of
Israel received the law and became a people of God. Oh, how gladly they
will have fulfilled the will of the Lord their God, who showed them such
great favour! Not all of them. For all that, from the time of their
election until their destruction, it was a rude and rebellious
generation that God had chosen to be his people, as sometimes when a
good man takes care of a strange child and raises it with fatherly
loyalty and yet does not experience much gratitude and joy in it. But
God knows what he is doing, and it will probably show.
More than once the Israelites wanted to return to their misery in Egypt.
They grumbled incessantly against Moses and Aaron and wanted to stone
him. They never wanted to taste the manna. It was no longer good enough
for them. In fact, it is almost impossible to say: while God was talking
to Moses on the mountain, they were worshipping an idol, a gilded calf,
down below. For the denial of the human heart is evil. Because of this
disobedience they had to wander in the desert for forty years. Meanwhile
Moses kept giving them stern warnings and beautiful prophecies that they
should be happy and blessed in Canaan and strong against their enemies
as long as they remained faithful to the Lord their God.
But if they were unfaithful to him, he would cast them out of this
beautiful land again and give them into the power of their enemies. He
also said to them: ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet
like me from among you and your brothers; you must obey him.’
Meanwhile, Aaron, Moses' brother, had died. His wife had already died;
indeed, he himself could no longer experience the joy of leading the
Israelites into the longed-for land and completing his arduous work. But
even before his death, God showed him from a mountain the land where his
fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had lived, with its fertile fields, its
rivers and its distant mountains, the beautiful land promised to their
descendants as their own. In the same way, God still cheers up the last
days of many a pious person's life. Before he dies, he shows him the
fruit of his deeds and the happiness of his relatives nearby and then
takes him to himself. So Moses died after he had seen the land of
promise.
This is the little boy who once lay in a box in the water in Egypt and
was pulled out by the king's daughter. The little boy led Israel out of
Egypt.
But all the Israelites who had come out of Egypt with Moses and Aaron
had gradually died in the wilderness except Joshua and Caleb, and all
who now stood on the border of Canaan had only been born in the
wilderness, a new generation in place of their fathers. Lord God, you
are our refuge for ever and ever. Before the mountains were made and the
earth and the world were created, you, God, are from everlasting to
everlasting. You who let men die and say: Come again, children of men.
Show your servants your works and your honour to their children!'
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