Three Times Moses Corrected God and Feared Og

Moses did not only bring law down from heaven. Three times in the wilderness, he pushed law back upward.

Click for full size

He had once stood barefoot and afraid before the burning bush. After Sinai, something in him had changed. He still feared sin. He still feared giants. But when a decree struck him as wrong for Israel, he stood before God and made the case.

The Calf Made the Singular Burn

The first argument rose from the golden calf.

Israel had come out of Egypt with idolatry still clinging to the eye. They had heard thunder at Sinai, but they had also stood at a distance. Moses had gone up the mountain. Moses had received the words. Even the command began in the singular: I am the Lord your God, using the form that could be heard as one man addressed.

So Moses stood before God and pressed the heart of it. "From where were they supposed to know? You spoke to me. Did I sin?"

It was a dangerous defense. Moses did not excuse the calf. He argued jurisdiction. If the law had landed formally in one pair of hands, how could the whole camp be judged as if each person had received it face to face?

God accepted the argument. "You have spoken well," God said. From now on the word would widen from the singular to the plural, from elohekha to eloheikhem, from one addressed servant to the whole people standing under command.

Children Left Their Fathers' Shadow

The second argument cut into inheritance.

God had spoken of reckoning the iniquity of fathers upon children. Moses brought names, not theory. Terah served idols, but Abraham rose from his house righteous. Ahaz was wicked, but Hezekiah stood upright after him. Amon did evil, but Josiah cleansed what his father had stained.

Should the son be crushed because the father's hands were dirty?

Moses would not let bloodline swallow judgment. A house can hand down gold, wounds, habits, and shame. It cannot make a righteous child guilty by birth. God answered with the same astonishing phrase: "You have taught Me."

The decree bent. Fathers would not be put to death for children. Children would not be put to death for fathers. Each soul would stand in its own place. God even wrote the changed law under Moses' name, as if the prophet's argument had become part of the Torah's own memory.

Peace Went Before the Sword

The third argument came at the border of war.

Sihon, king of Heshbon, stood ahead of Israel. God told Moses to rise, cross the Arnon ravine, take possession, and provoke war. Moses did not begin with the sword. He sent messengers.

Peace went first.

The messengers carried a path that could have spared blood: let Israel pass. Sihon refused. Only then did battle come, and God gave him into Israel's hand.

Again the answer came from above. "You have taught Me." From then on, when Israel approached a city for war, peace had to be called to it first. Moses had not weakened the command. He had forced violence to wait at the door while mercy knocked.

The Ravines Carried the Proof

Sihon's open army was not the only danger.

Men hid in caves, waiting to strike Israel from the dark. God hinted to the mountain, and the mountain crushed them. The dead remained hidden where Israel could not see the rescue. A hidden miracle can leave a saved people thankless, so God moved the mountains apart and let the streams wash the remains through the ravines.

Only then did Israel sing.

Their song rose beside the well, but Moses' name was missing. He heard the music and felt the decree around him tighten. From the wilderness came Matana, the gift of Torah. From Matana came Nachaliel, God's inheritance. From Nachaliel came Bamot, and in that name Moses heard death climbing out of the ravine. From Bamot the path ran toward the canyon in Moab, where his own grave waited.

Og Still Made Moses Tremble

After Sihon fell, Og king of Bashan stood before him.

Moses had corrected decrees, argued law, and watched mountains obey a hint from God. Still, Og's size shook him. The giant was more than five hundred years old. Moses was one hundred and twenty. Long life might mean hidden merit. Og had escaped Amraphel when other giants fell. Perhaps God had favored him. Perhaps Israel had sinned in the war just finished, and protection had thinned.

The pious do not treat promises like armor they can own. They fear the damage sin can do.

God cut through the shadow. Og's fall had been decreed long before, from the hour he looked with an evil eye on Jacob and his family as they entered Egypt. That eye would burst. The giant would fall into the hands of the children he had despised.

Moses went forward, not because fear vanished, but because God named the fear and answered it.