As mentioned in an earlier article, I recently returned to Italy after serving as spiritual director for a ten-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Understandably, the focus of our journey was to walk in the footsteps of Christ. Nevertheless, we also made several excursions to places found in the Bible and important for salvation history, even though they do not figure prominently (or at all) in the Gospels. One such place was Mt. Nebo. Located in present-day Jordan. The mount features prominently in the last chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy:
Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, the peak of Pisgah which faces Jericho, and the LORD showed him all the land—Gilead, and as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, the plain (the valley of Jericho, the City of Palms), and as far as Zoar. The LORD then said to him, “This is the land about which I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross over.” So there, in the land of Moab, Moses, the servant of the LORD, died as the LORD had said. (Deuteronomy 34:1-5)
Place of Pilgrimage
In the 1930’s, the Franciscans began excavating the site, uncovering a church and monastery. Evidence suggests that the mount was already a place of pilgrimage in the 4th century; today, with the new church, many pilgrims make their way to see where Moses gazed upon the Holy Land.
As amazing as the view was, it also gave rise to two questions: first, some of the pilgrims remembered why Moses wasn’t allowed into the Holy Land. Indeed, shortly before Moses actually climbs up Mt. Nebo, the Lord tells him:
You shall die on the mountain you are about to ascend [just like Aaron] . . . because both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin: you did not manifest my holiness among the Israelites. (Deuteronomy 32:50-51)
The event that the Lord is referring to is recounted in Numbers 20:1-13. The Israelites complain and even hold an assembly against Moses and Aaron because they have no water. Rather sensibly, the duo leave the assembly and head straight for the meeting tent, where “the glory of the Lord appeared” and issued the following instruction: Moses was to “command the rock to yield its waters.” We’re told that “Moses took the staff from its place before the LORD, as he was ordered” – so far, so good.
But then, “Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly in front of the rock, where he said to them, “Just listen, you rebels! Are we to produce water for you out of this rock?” Then, raising his hand, Moses struck the rock twice with his staff, and water came out in abundance, and the community and their livestock drank.”
Notwithstanding the miracle, immediately afterwards God gives the duo their punishment: “Because you did not have confidence in me, to acknowledge my holiness before the Israelites, therefore you shall not lead this assembly into the land I have given them.” Several pilgrims commented that such a punishment seems harsh: all Moses did was tap a rock twice! Yet, seemingly that was serious enough to warrant not setting foot in the Holy Land. Why such a harsh punishment for such a little offense?
A Panorama View
The second question is less obvious. We’re told that from Mt. Nebo Moses saw the extent of the Holy Land: Gilead, Dan, Naphtali, Ephraim and Manasseh, Judah, the Negeb, the plain, and as far as Zoar. For many, the names and their locations mean very little; however, as our guide pointed out, the actual, physical expanse is huge. For instance, the territory of Dan extends to the Mediterranean Sea, and the land of Naphtali extends north of the Sea of Tiberias.
On a very clear day, as we were blessed with, you can see Jerusalem in the distance, over 25 miles away. However, to see the entire Holy Land, as Moses did, is impossible with just human vision (even if Moses’ eyes were “undimmed”). It must have been a special grace, a gift from God, to see the territory, even though he wouldn’t enter it. For some, it would seem that being granted the ability to see a paradise that is impossible to enter, a heaven on earth that is meant for others, and not for you, would be akin to torture.
It doesn’t seem, though, that God’s point is to make Moses suffer. Yet, why show him a land when his punishment is to never be able to enter it?
The Guilt of Moses and Aaron
To answer that, we must consider what it was, exactly, that Moses and Aaron were guilty of. We know that Moses struck the rock twice, and often we assume he should’ve just struck it once. However, this is not the case: in fact, Moses was told to “command the rock to yield its waters,” in other words, to talk to it and tell it to give up the goods. He didn’t need to touch it, not even once. Moreover, Moses and Aaron had just seen God’s glory, and yet they doubted.
Some say that Moses and Aaron had a problem with pride: after all, they tell the Israelites: “Just listen, you rebels! Are we to produce water for you out of this rock?” The implication, then, is that they were working the miracle by themselves.
It’s true that refusing to believe in God and to rely on Him is a form of pride; yet, when the Lord rebukes the two, the correction is directed towards their faith as well as the circumstances: “Because you did not have confidence in me, to acknowledge my holiness before the Israelites,” you will not enter the Holy Land.
The problem is partially their lack of faith; however, part of the problem is also that they were leaders. They were the ones who were supposed to guide the Israelites and to be an example, and yet they fell short right at the crucial moment.
Lessons of Leadership
What can we learn from this? We see how seriously God takes leadership and authority, especially Christian leadership. This goes in a particular way for bishops and priests, but also for parents, grandparents, godparents, and anyone with a leadership position in the Church. Every year, in the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church proposed a series of readings from Saint Augustine’s homily on shepherds, wherein he examines the prophet Ezekiel’s rebuke of Israel’s leaders.
Augustine has many writings with a fiery tone, but he realizes that any rebuke of leaders finds its target on his own back. Preaching to the congregation, he says:
You must listen attentively; I must listen with fear and trembling. . . . Many persons come to God as Christians but not as leaders. Perhaps they travel by an easier road and are less hindered since they bear a lighter burden. In addition to the fact that I am a Christian and must give God an account of my life, I as a leader must give him an account of my stewardship as well.
It’s not easy to be in charge, or to hold a leadership position, because in addition to caring for their own souls, they must also look after the souls of those they are responsible for. Being disappointed with a leader is, I think, a universal experience: it reminds us to pray for those who lead and govern us, and while in this life such ones might think they have little or no accountability to us, they cannot escape the God who has permitted them to be in their post with their responsibilities.
Punishment and Gift
For these reasons, we can see why Moses and Aaron are punished so severely. But why give Moses a special grace to see the whole land that he had been promised? It doesn’t make sense that God would show it to him to make him suffer: after all, it’s punishment enough to know he’ll never enter it, and he’s about to die anyways.
On the contrary, the vision of the entire Promised Land is a grace, a gift. God shows Moses that, even if Moses has fallen short, God will fulfill His part of the promise. Moses is an important figure, but he is just one of many people in the story and history of salvation. Moses will receive his reward, and the work he undertook will bear fruit, even if Moses himself will not be able to touch the Promised Land with his own hands and walk on its soil with his own feet. Generations after him will benefit from his work.
In the same way too, the God who “makes all things new” is not limited by the failings or shortcomings of those who serve Him. Certainly, it is perhaps less of a struggle when we have excellent leaders, holy parents, and praying godparents, but even with flawed leaders, lousy parents, and missing godparents, God can renew and restore.
In this, too, those of us who are responsible for others can take comfort in the fact that, even if we fall short, God’s work isn’t made impossible through our failings. We should all try our best and hardest to be saints, but nothing is an impediment to God accomplishing His will; there is no sin, no failing, no mistake that prevents God from saving souls, even ours.
And Jesus said ‘ . . . My words shall not pass away.’
I enjoyed the dialogue between author and commentator, however. using Ockham’s razor, it is so elementary that the OT is a one-way fictional account whereby man PUTS words in God’s mouth to justify allegorical behaviors that thwart science, reason and even faith. Sorry, ie: God didn’t tell Abraham to kill his son – as explained by the good Sisters of Notre Dame using Jesuit apologetics this attempted murder was a symbolic fable / gesture that signaled the end to a world of human sacrifice. Always enjoy your tact, Fr Nathaniel and a pleasure reading.
Hi ordinary papist, and thanks for reading the article (and all the subsequent comments!).
You have hit on a whole bunch of important topics: the interpretation of Scripture, the use (or misuse, rather, because there can be no contradiction between faith and reason) of Scripture to contradict science or reason, how to make sense of difficult passages of the Bible, and more. I won’t be able to do justice to all of the topics in a short reply (plus, I wouldn’t want to get into any disagreements with the School Sisters of Notre Dame; all the ones I’ve met are still sharp and spry, even into their 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s!), but I would note that the general tenor of the explanation you give is certainly one that has gained a lot of influence in Biblical studies within the past century or so, especially with the work of Rudolf Bultmann and friends. There are indeed passages where we scratch our heads: when I read your comment, I immediately thought of Ex 9:12, when Pharaoh is becoming more and more stubborn. After the sixth plague (all those nasty boils!), we’re told that “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” In a word, that’s an odd statement: God wants His people to get out of Egypt, so why would He make Pharaoh’s heart hard? There are different thoughts about what it means: most say that it means God left Pharaoh to his own devices, and the consequence of getting his own way meant having a hardened heart. In other words, God permitted the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, rather than actively causing it. On the surface, in a passage like this it seems like the Bible is attributing to God something that He didn’t do, but perhaps this is reflective of the mindset that God is Cause and Creator, and the author of Exodus didn’t think it was necessary to explain in detail what had happened. I think this would be an example of trying to read Scripture in “the spirit in which it was written” (Dei Verbum, 12).
All that being said, I think it’s also important to keep in mind that the Bible is a special book (or, more properly, books). In his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, Pius XII addresses the fact that in the Bible, there even may be parts that have been taken from ancient stories of creation, floods, etc. (what he calls “popular narrations”). Yet, he also maintains that, even so, the Bible is something special. He writes: “If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on a par with myths or other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers” (pts 38-39). In other words, even if the Biblical authors have borrowed some of these elements (which some might call myths or fables), even so, the Bible is in a different class. This is because, as Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, phrases it (in pt. 11): “Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.” Ockham’s razor might work in some cases, but when we’re working with a special text, one that has God as its primary author, things get complicated.
” …holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”
Thanks for the insight Fr. Nate. I hear you. This excerpt from your answer piqued another
observation : how many people of faith today might be interpreting and posturing this exceptional tome with substantive “divine inspiration” of their own; designed to reopen (esp the OT) a more rational understanding. When, at mass, a reading from the Genesis era is sequenced, 21st century knowledge is set aside without footnotes in favor of allegorical acceptance which must surely set up an a-sacred dichotomy. This can’t be helpful – to know one set of facts and be fed another that is mythical in nature. Pope Francis seems to be pushing this envelope in iconoclasm and for all the controversy of his papal tenure, the time for a new understanding of the eons gone by is long overdue.
Thanks again, ordinary papist, for your comment.
I think you are right: the Scriptures continue to speak to us today, and we’ve got to read them in “the spirit in which [they were] written” (Dei Verbum, 12). Since the Scriptures are inspired, there is an infinite trove of riches to be mined in them, and it’s up to us, with the Holy Spirit’s help, to continue to engage them, confronting all of their challenges (especially how they challenge our daily lives!).
My concern would be that rationalizing Scripture can reach an extreme (as can pretty much everything, like the literal interpretation of Scripture). I recall (vaguely, since I spent sixth grade with a level of engagement somewhere between that of a rock and an artificial plant) that once my teacher suggested that a successful apologetics of our faith could be based on what she had recently heard on TV. A Protestant preacher was discussing Christianity with non-believers, and the topic of the Resurrection of Jesus came up. One of the participants said she simply couldn’t accept that Jesus rose from the dead, and the preacher replied something to the effect of “Well, think: back in the day, medicine wasn’t as advanced as it was today. Maybe it was possible he really wasn’t dead when they put him in the tomb, and after three days he just recovered and came out? Could that be the case?” The woman agreed, and so the preacher said, “See?! That’s all we’re saying: he came out of the tomb after three days. That’s enough to believe.” However, I’m not really sure that it is. After all, she doesn’t really have faith in the Resurrection.
In any case, I think it’s a delicate balance but, with the Holy Spirit, it’s a fine line that we can walk.
God bless!
I heard that one before about Jesus not really dying. I wouldn’t ever entertain such a notion as there are some tenets of our faith that you must have a rock solid literal understanding in black and white or you’re not even close to being Catholic. Thanks again for your insight.
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It is a dangerous game to try to explain why God acts the way he does, at least in the Old Testament. Once you posit that God is incapable of being unfair, that he was not really being unfair to Moses, you are also positing that he was not really being unfair to Esau or Ishmael, or for that matter to the children of the Amalekites, etc.
Hi CaptCrisis, and thanks for the comment!
I think you’ve hit on one of the great questions of Christianity, and religion in general: what are we to think or do when God’s interventions in the world don’t make sense? Especially in the Old Testament, as you point out, there are so many things that can leave us scratching our heads. On the one hand, I’ve always liked that way the Catechism puts it: “Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely” (102). The fullness of Revelation comes in Jesus Christ, in whom we see God the Father fully revealed. In the Old Testament, “God spoke in partial and various ways,” but now, in these latter days, “He has spoken through His Son” (to borrow some words from the Letter to the Hebrews, 1:1-2), and it’s in the light of Jesus Christ that we need to read all Scripture; He’s like the thread that unites everything, the melody that gets repeated throughout, even though sometimes that thread is tiny and hard to see, or that melody is hard to hear, almost drowned out by the chaos that’s going on in the world. You’re right to say it’s hard to know why God does what He does; in fact, I think we can say it’s impossible to know perfectly why God does what He does. Even the great theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, when speaking about the mysteries of God, talks about why it was “fitting” or “appropriate” for God to do what He did, like become incarnate; he knows that he can’t say “This is why God did it!” because we just can’t know perfectly. What I think we can say, though, is that if Jesus Christ is the fullness of the revelation of God the Father, then, even if what God does or asks in the Old Testament seems confusing or hard to understand, then it’s not that God is being unfair (just as Jesus wasn’t and isn’t unfair), but rather that we simply don’t understand the what or the why of what God is doing. I’m pretty sure that God knows how hard it is for us to understand the things He does: for instance, through the prophet Ezekiel, we’re told “You say, ‘The LORD’s way is not fair!’ Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair? Are not your ways unfair?” (18:26). Ezekiel is writing at a very difficult time for the house of Israel: the Babylonian exile. I’m sure plenty of Israelites were struggling to figure out why this had happened to them, and I’m sure many (if not all of them) were suffering greatly. Yet, God’s words reminded them, and remind us, that there’s more going on here than meets the eye; this momentary suffering is a part of a bigger plan. I’m sure plenty of people living through it were still angry and upset, but ultimately it’s the God the Israelites were accusing of being unfair who would restore them to their homeland and give them back what He had taken away. It makes me think that, if the Israelites had just continued saying God was unfair, and left it at that, they would’ve cut themselves off from the One (Divine) Person who could make sense or make good out of their seemingly senseless sufferings.
Sorry, that’s a very long reply to your comment, but yours was a very insightful, very profound question, and I hope I gave it an equally insightful and profound answer.
God bless!
Thanks for your long and thoughtful reply.
To an objective observer the Old Testament God is not only unfair but cruel and murderous (along with being misogynist, capricious, small-minded, jealous, and easily manipulated). What concerns me about trying to explain away such behavior is that it leads to justification for such behavior by human beings. To take a comic example, in the Evelyn Waugh novel “Vile Bodies”, a well-meaning prison chaplain gives a man convicted of mass murder a Bible. The Old Testament is full of what we in the mental health field call “command hallucinations”, and the prisoner, so instructed, proceeds to murder half his prison block.
A more serious example: years ago when working at a crisis center in the Bible Belt I had to try to talk a woman out of a loaded gun she had in her purse. She had found out that her husband had been cheating on her and she was determined to shoot him when he got home. We couldn’t find him to warn him and I had to sit with her for hours while she kept saying, “‘Vengeance is mine’, sayeth the Lord!” (Fortunately she eventually calmed down and we eventually did find the husband.)
Good morning, Capt. First, with experiences like that, you’ve earned the name “CaptCrisis”! God bless you for your work, especially with those who are suffering from mental illness and are in crisis.
Thanks again for the comment; there’s a lot of food for thought in what you say.
I agree with what you said: there’s a lot of things in the Old Testament that shouldn’t be taken as a model for moral behavior today. We have, for instance, the multiple wives of David and the kings of Israel, the extermination of entire peoples, and the like. Some of these things God permits or even commands, and we certainly don’t want to say that genocide, murder, or the like are ok.
I find, for me at least, that part of the answer lies in what Jesus says in Mt 19: the Pharisees are asking about divorce, and Jesus says that it’s not ok. They then ask why Moses allowed them to divorce, and Jesus replies: “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (v. 8). In other words, as I see it, it’s not the God has simply changed the rules; there’s more to it than that. He’s well-aware of what His people can do and what they can’t do, and He comes to their level. I guess that maybe, instead of God being petty, cruel . . . in a word, evil, what happened rather is that God, when working with petty, cruel, sinful people, meets them where they’re at, and tries to raise them up morally and spiritually. Some things certainly sound awful to us, but perhaps in their day, it was really the highest level of morality there was. For instance, “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” sounds like a very minimal sort of primitive moral code. However, Biblical scholars and historians note that it was a substantial requirement; for many ancient cultures, revenge had no limits, and to establish that you could only exact a certain amount of justice for an injury or offense was in itself something revolutionary, even if it doesn’t seem like much for us today. But, then again, we’re living after the time of Jesus Christ, with the sacraments, the Mass, and so many ways to obtain grace. I guess I tend to think of God in the Old Testament speaking to His people the way parents speak to a newborn: linguists tell us that the language parents use with their newborns is quite different from normal speech. For instance, it’s generally higher in pitch and is simpler in terms of grammar and vocabulary. On the one hand, we’d expect that: after all, it’s a newborn, so they’re not going to understand if we start reading Shakespeare to them. But, on that same token, we wouldn’t keep speaking to them in that way once they were 4, or 5, or 50. In the same way, I see the God of the Old Testament adjusting Himself to what His people and the culture can receive.
It’s true what you say: there’s a lot of thing in the Old Testament that aren’t good. There’s a lot of things that are, in a word, evil, and you’re absolutely right: we can’t justify people doing evil things like that today. We just can’t, and we can’t let people say, “Well, God did it, so I can too!” I guess what makes me wonder, though, is that if we say God is cruel, unjust . . . in a word, that the Old Testament God is evil, I’m not sure it solves the problem, because, at least for me, I see a couple big issues that arise. First, if the Old Testament God is evil, and the New Testament Jesus is good, then I find myself sort of stuck: either they’re not the same God, or God changes. If they’re not the same God, I don’t know how to make sense of what Jesus says with things like “The Father and I are one.” If He changes, we’re in bigger trouble still, because He could change back to evil mode, and then maybe all these bad things would become ok again. Second, if it’s God Himself who is evil, and does such bad things, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hang out with Him for all eternity . . . which, ultimately, gives me liberty to do what I want anyways, because what would it matter if heaven isn’t all that great? Third, if we say that God Himself is cruel or unjust, rather than saying He adjusts for the people, or permits things that aren’t ultimately good or fair because He knows what His people can and can’t do, well, if God Himself is unjust, then I can’t use Him as a sort of measure for morality at all. Then, I’m sort of without any anchoring or base to know what’s right or wrong. I mean, there’s the natural law, but that won’t be enough for all the fine points that come up in real life.
In short, I agree with your main points: there’s a lot back in the Old Testament that’s not ok today, and we can’t use the Old Testament to justify bad actions. I think the fullness of Revelation that we have in Jesus Christ gives us that sure standard we need to live in a morally upright way here and now.
Again, thanks for the comment; it’s good to think about these questions, and I appreciate your insights!
Fr.,
That’s a heap ‘o praise. Thank you.
You touch on the issue that troubled Marcion and other early Christians: the Old Testament God sure seems different from the New Testament God. Yet Jesus clearly is referring to the Old Testament God when he says “my Father”. The destruction he foretells sounds like one of the many destructions in the O.T.
There’s also the problem of “the other”. By these extreme instructions the O.T. God might be teaching something to the Jews appropriate to the time and place, but he doesn’t seem to care about instructing the children of the Amalekites, whom he ordered murdered. Fortunately I’m not a priest and I’m not charged with defending any of this stuff. It’s not a comfortable topic but it’s a good sign these days that more and more are like you, on the side of inclusion and not exclusion.