Forty Years in the Wilderness

Moses now came boldly before the people and told them that God was moved by their insults to him and would punish them — not as their sins deserved, but as parents punish their children, to correct them. While he was in the tabernacle, he said, weeping over the destruction that was coming on them, God had reminded him of all he had done for them and all the benefits they had received from him, and how ungrateful they had been to him: just now, through the cowardice of the spies, they had been led to think the spies’ words truer than God’s own promise. For this reason, though he would not destroy them all or wipe out their nation, which he had honored above all the rest of mankind, he would not let them take possession of the land of Canaan or enjoy its good fortune. Instead he would make them wander in the wilderness, with no settled home and no city, for forty years together, as the punishment for this offense of theirs. But God had promised, he said, “to give that land to your children, and to make them the owners of the good things that you, by your ungoverned passions, have deprived yourselves of.” [a]

When Moses had spoken to them in this way, as God had directed him, the people were grieved and distressed. They begged Moses to win their reconciliation with God, and to let them wander no longer in the wilderness but give them cities. He answered that God would allow no such trial: God had not come to this decision out of human fickleness or anger, but had passed sentence on them as a judge. Now we should not disbelieve that Moses, a single man, calmed so many tens of thousands when they were angry and brought them round to a gentler temper. God was with him and prepared the way for his words to persuade the people. And since they had often disobeyed, they now saw that disobedience did them no good, and that it had already brought them into disasters.

This man was admirable for his virtue, and had the power to make people believe what he told them — and not only during his natural life. Even now there is not one of the Hebrews who does not act as if Moses were present and ready to punish him if he did anything improper. No, there is no one who does not obey the laws he laid down, even when he could break them unseen. There are many other proofs that his power was more than human. Some people have come from beyond the Euphrates, a journey of four months, through many dangers and at great expense, to honor our temple; and yet, after making their offerings, they could not share in their own sacrifices, because Moses had forbidden it on account of something that had happened to them which neither our law nor our ancestral customs allow. Some of these did not sacrifice at all; others left their sacrifices unfinished; many could not even enter the temple in the first place, but went their way, preferring submission to the laws of Moses to the fulfilling of their own wishes. They had no fear that anyone could convict them; they acted only out of reverence for their own conscience. So this legislation, which was seen to be divine, made this man regarded as one superior to his own nature. [c]

More than that: a little before the beginning of this war, when Claudius was emperor of the Romans and Ishmael was our high priest, so great a famine came on our country that a measure of about two quarts sold for four drachmas. Yet when no less than seventy cors of flour — about 420 bushels — were brought into the temple at the feast of unleavened bread, not one of the priests dared to eat a crumb of it, even with such distress on the land. They held back out of dread of the law and of the wrath God keeps against acts of wickedness, even when no one can accuse those who commit them. So we should not wonder at what was done then, since to this very day the writings Moses left have such force that even those who hate us admit that the one who established our constitution was God, and that it was through Moses and his virtue. But as to these matters, let everyone take them as he thinks fit.