021. Prayer Of Moses That The People May Not Be Smitten With Pestilence.

Prayer Of Moses That The People May Not Be Smitten With Pestilence. The Prayer as recorded.—Numbers 14:13-19. The Answer.—Numbers 14:20-24. This humble intercession of Moses exhibits him still as a type of Christ, praying and pleading for his persecutors. The prophet does not offer any excuse for the sins of his people, but he feels that if the Lord consume them, the story of their destruction would not, by those who knew not God, be attributed to him as an act of justice, but gloried in as a shortening of that arm that had hitherto delivered them; he is jealous for the glory of God; he would not have the power of the Almighty questioned; hence his plea, “Let the power of my Lord be great.”

Three of the attributes of Jehovah are brought up by the prophet to urge him to listen to his request—his goodness, his mercy, and his willingness to forgive, all of which had been shown in times past towards his sinful people. His fervent prayer prevailed with God, who had threatened at this time to destroy them with pestilence, and make of Moses himself a mighty nation; their doom is respited in answer to the fervent appeal. “They were indeed to perish in the wilderness, but not yet; forty years were the adults to wander, and gradually die out, never to enter or see the promised land; cowardly, distrustful, and enfeebled by bondage, the fathers should be succeeded by their children, trained up under the institutions God had given them, moulded under them into a nation, and strengthened into manly character under the freedom which had been so triumphantly won for them” (Dr. Kitto). The only survivors of all the children of Israel who were to live to enter Canaan were Caleb and Joshua. The spirit of the former is particularly spoken ofas a new spirit, one which led him to “follow the Lord fully;” he was assured of inheriting the promise, “Him will I bring in due time into the land whereinto he went;”—it was a spirit differing from that which loves the world and the fleeting things of it—a spirit which leads to prayer.