Even Aaron, though honored with the dignity of the priesthood, and Moses’ sister Miriam were drawn into it. Miriam, stirred by a somewhat feminine jealousy of the honor God had given Moses, said something that provoked God to punish the offense. Here Moses’ patience is especially worthy of admiration. When God punished her irrational envy, Moses made the bond of kinship stronger than his anger and won God’s mercy for his sister.
The people again fell into disorder, this time led by an uncontrolled appetite for bodily pleasure. They were not satisfied to live in health and without distress on the food flowing down from above. Their craving for flesh—their hunger for meat—made slavery in Egypt seem preferable to the blessings they now possessed. Moses brought before God the passion that had seized them, and God corrected them by giving them what they wanted. A vast number of birds came over the camp like a cloud, flying close to the ground in flocks. They were so easy to catch that the people’s craving for meat ran to excess.
Their excessive eating quickly upset the balance of their bodies and produced harmful bodily fluids. Their overindulgence ended in sickness and death. What happened became a sufficient lesson in self-control both for them and for those who looked to their example.
Moses then sent spies into the land that, by God’s promise, they hoped would become their home. Not all of them reported the truth. Some brought back false and discouraging reports, and once again the people turned angrily against Moses. God then condemned those who had given up hope in divine help: they would never see the land that had been promised to them.
As they continued through the wilderness, their water failed again, and with it their memory of God’s power. They did not trust that the earlier miracle at the rock meant their need would be met again. Instead they abandoned better hopes and hurled abuse at both God and Moses. Moses himself even seemed to waver under the people’s unbelief. Yet once again he worked a wonder for them, making that sheer rock pour out water.
Again their slavish appetite for food stirred up their gluttony. Although they lacked none of the necessities of life, they dreamed of the abundance they had known in Egypt. Like disorderly young people corrected with harsher whips, they were disciplined when snakes throughout the camp bit them with deadly venom.
As people kept falling one after another from the snakes, Moses, moved by divine counsel, cast bronze into the likeness of a serpent and raised it high above the whole camp. In this way he stopped the destruction caused by the snakes. Whoever looked at the image of the serpent in bronze no longer feared the bite of a real snake, because some mysterious counteracting force weakened the venom.
Another revolt then arose among the people against Moses’ leadership, with some trying to seize the priesthood for themselves. Moses pleaded with God for those who were sinning, but the justice of God’s judgment proved stronger than Moses’ compassion for his own people. By God’s will the earth split open into a chasm and then closed again, swallowing whole families of those who had risen against Moses’ authority. About two hundred and fifty others who had raged in pursuit of the priesthood were consumed by fire. Their fate brought the rest of the people to their senses.
To convince the people more fully that the grace of the priesthood comes from God to those He judges worthy, Moses received staffs from the leading men of every tribe, each giver marking his own staff with his name. Aaron the priest’s staff was among them. Moses placed the staffs beside the sanctuary and through them made God’s decision about the priesthood clear to the people. Of all the staffs, Aaron’s alone sprouted. It put forth fruit from the wood—a nut—and brought it to full ripeness.
This seemed the greatest wonder even to unbelievers: how a piece of wood with no bark, stripped bare and without roots, could suddenly become vigorous and do what rooted plants do. Divine power took the place of soil, bark, moisture, roots, and branches for the wood.