Numbers 14

Some people just never learn.

Even after the deaths of thousands upon thousands of complaining quail eaters, even after that complainer Miriam was stricken with leprosy and banished from the camp for a week, there are still some among the Israelites who think it's a good idea to gather around the water cooler and take pot shots at the bosses.

Like Moses himself, they wish that God would have killed them in Egypt instead of setting them free in the desert, and now that they are in the desert they wish God would simply kill them where they stand. And, they wonder further, if God wants them to live why are they going to fight the Canaanites just to die by their swords? They think it would be better to pick a new leader and head back to Egypt. For some reason they think the pharaoh is going to welcome them back home after Moses turned the Nile to blood, made frogs fall from the sky, and caused the deaths of innocent children. I'm sure pharaoh is baking a cake for them right now, a nice big explody cake with shrapnel filling.

Moses and some of the guys who checked out Canaan try to stop the people from bugging out by extolling the virtues of Canaan. "The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land," they say. "If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. And they have free wi-fi at the Starbucks."

The Israelites listened for a moment before collecting rocks to stone Mo and Co to death. They were desert stones, so they were heavy and hot.

At the last second, God jumps in. As usual, He's hell bent on destroying everyone for their insolence. Moses appeals to God's overinflated sense of pride. "Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man," Moses says, "then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness." 

God's still standing there with his arms crossed and that pout on his lips, so Moses tries for flattery: "The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.'

But God isn't falling for the same old tricks this time. He is sore pissed and ready to slap some bitches down. As a result He decides who among the Israelites will be allowed to enter the Promised Land.

"Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles," God says. "Which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now...and have not hearkened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it." I'm not sure If I'm interpreting this correctly, but that list appears to include simply everyone.

Except for Caleb, the guy who ventured into Canaan to steal the grapes. He’s cool to live there, as are his descendants. They are to go into the wilderness by way of the Red Sea, presumably to prepare occupying--sorry, living--in Canaan.

God then turns to Moses and Aaron and tells them that the most annoying thing the Israelites do is murmur against Him. "I can never hear a thing they're saying," He says. "Maybe you could give them diction lessons?" The second most annoying thing is leaving the seat up.

Not only aren’t these murmurers allowed into Canaan, they can’t just leave either. They have to to stay in the desert for forty years. 

Moses tells they congregation their punishment for not heeding God's rules, and they decide, against the will of God (!), to climb a mountain near Canaan, where they are struck down by the residents of Canaan and driven to Hormah. 

Way to pay attention to the details, Israelites!