Numbers 20:5

The burden of the animals of the South. Through the land of trouble and anguish, of the lioness and the lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they carry their riches on the shoulders of young donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to an unprofitable people.

Moses lifted up his hand, and struck the rock with his rod twice, and water came out abundantly. The congregation and their livestock drank.

Yahweh sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people. Many people of Israel died.

For Yahweh your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has known your walking through this great wilderness. These forty years, Yahweh your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing.

He found him in a desert land, in the waste howling wilderness. He surrounded him. He cared for him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of waters.

“ ‘ “Now when I passed by you, and looked at you, behold, your time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over you, and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore to you, and entered into a covenant with you,” says the Lord Yahweh, “and you became mine.

Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb. You shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

Moreover you haven’t brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We won’t come up.”

We traveled from Horeb and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw, by the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as Yahweh our God commanded us; and we came to Kadesh Barnea.

Many times they have afflicted me from my youth up. Let Israel now say,

Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth?’

Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells. No son of man passes by it.

In all your abominations and your prostitution you have not remembered the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and were wallowing in your blood.

Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish to you an everlasting covenant.

She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them; and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.’

“Yet I am Yahweh your God from the land of Egypt; and you shall acknowledge no god but me, and besides me there is no savior.

But I have said to you, “You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am Yahweh your God, who has separated you from the peoples.

Your clothing didn’t grow old on you, neither did your foot swell, these forty years.

Go out, you daughters of Zion, and see king Solomon, with the crown with which his mother has crowned him, in the day of his weddings, in the day of the gladness of his heart.

“Return, backsliding children,” says Yahweh; “for I am a husband to you. I will take one of you from a city, and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.

“Stand in the gate of Yahweh’s house, and proclaim this word there, and say, ‘Hear Yahweh’s word, all you of Judah, who enter in at these gates to worship Yahweh.’ ”

Yahweh said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Hear the words of this covenant, and do them.

“ ‘ “But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. They didn’t walk in my statutes, and they rejected my ordinances, which if a man keeps, he shall live in them. They greatly profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them in the wilderness, to consume them.

“ ‘ “But the children rebelled against me. They didn’t walk in my statutes, and didn’t keep my ordinances to do them, which if a man does, he shall live in them. They profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness.

I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.

I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she will respond there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

They will walk after Yahweh, who will roar like a lion; for he will roar, and the children will come trembling from the west.

I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.

I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, to a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’

The children of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land. They ate the manna until they came to the borders of the land of Canaan.

“If a man causes a field or vineyard to be eaten by letting his animal loose, and it grazes in another man’s field, he shall make restitution from the best of his own field, and from the best of his own vineyard.

but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the animal of the field shall eat. In the same way, you shall deal with your vineyard and with your olive grove.

You shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with venomous snakes and scorpions, and thirsty ground where there was no water; who poured water for you out of the rock of flint;

I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not grown old on you, and your sandals have not grown old on your feet.

He made him ride on the high places of the earth. He ate the increase of the field. He caused him to suck honey out of the rock, oil out of the flinty rock;

Gideon said to him, “Oh, my lord, if Yahweh is with us, why then has all this happened to us? Where are all his wondrous works which our fathers told us of, saying, ‘Didn’t Yahweh bring us up from Egypt?’ But now Yahweh has cast us off, and delivered us into the hand of Midian.”

The Philistines laid hold on him and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with fetters of bronze; and he ground at the mill in the prison.

Nahash the Ammonite said to them, “On this condition I will make it with you, that all your right eyes be gouged out. I will make this dishonor all Israel.”

He took Elijah’s mantle that fell from him, and struck the waters, and said, “Where is Yahweh, the God of Elijah?” When he also had struck the waters, they were divided apart, and Elisha went over.

and refused to obey. They weren’t mindful of your wonders that you did among them, but hardened their neck, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage. But you are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and didn’t forsake them.

“Yes, forty years you sustained them in the wilderness. They lacked nothing. Their clothes didn’t grow old, and their feet didn’t swell.

Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it.

But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,

The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but those who seek Yahweh shall not lack any good thing.

He opened the rock, and waters gushed out. They ran as a river in the dry places.

They wandered in the wilderness in a desert way. They found no city to live in.

to him who led his people through the wilderness; for his loving kindness endures forever:

Who is this who comes up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree I aroused you. There your mother conceived you. There she was in labor and bore you.

The burning sand will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Grass with reeds and rushes will be in the habitation of jackals, where they lay.

The voice of one saying, “Cry!” One said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field.

Behold, I will do a new thing. It springs out now. Don’t you know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

“Cry aloud! Don’t spare! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Declare to my people their disobedience, and to the house of Jacob their sins.

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.

There is no one who calls on your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have consumed us by means of our iniquities.

“Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Yahweh says, “I remember for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your weddings; how you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.

They didn’t say, ‘Where is Yahweh who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, through a land that no one passed through, and where no man lived?’

The priests didn’t say, ‘Where is Yahweh?’ and those who handle the law didn’t know me. The rulers also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and followed things that do not profit.

Let us lie down in our shame, and let our confusion cover us; for we have sinned against Yahweh our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day. We have not obeyed Yahweh our God’s voice.”

Though they say, ‘As Yahweh lives,’ surely they swear falsely.”

What has my beloved to do in my house, since she has behaved lewdly with many, and the holy flesh has passed from you? When you do evil, then you rejoice.”

Yahweh says, “The people who survive the sword found favor in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest.”

not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says Yahweh.

Just as I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you,” says the Lord Yahweh.

Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;

Lest I strip her naked, and make her bare as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.

“Therefore behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.

By a prophet Yahweh brought Israel up out of Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved.

“Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel?

the people who sat in darkness saw a great light, to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned.”

to shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death; to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

For a period of about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness.

and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Then out of the smoke came locusts on the earth, and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power.