1:26-28 - But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, "The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, 'The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.'"

The cause of GenA's loss and reversal of fortune is, from Moses' perspective, simply explained: "but you refused" and "you rebelled" (v26). They "grumbled in your tents," i.e., they grumbled among themselves,1 fumigating the camp with toxic discontent. There is a Chinese saying that mouths never stop jabbering in a rotting family.

Not only has Moses' call for unity of purpose fallen on deaf ears. The mutiny now dares point the dagger at God with their accusation that "Yahweh hates us," and imputing to Him a wicked and malicious intention: "so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us" (v27b). This is not only viciously cynical but also a diametrical rephrasing of the often-repeated affirmation in the Old Testament of God's mercy and love, that he brought them out of Egypt in order to liberate them and to give them the good land.2 Forty years earlier, when Israel had rebelled against God with their worship of the golden calf at Sinai, Moses, in appealing to Yahweh to forgive the people, had muscled Yahweh with the argument, "Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth'?" (Exo32:12). What Yahweh would not allow the Egyptians to do to Him then, Israel now did. Of all their rebellions—and there had been not a few—this is the most outrageously contemptible. If this had been a marital conflict, the brokeness seared into the marriage by such accusations would have made the couple irreparably irreconciliable.

Their concluding cry of despair, "Where are we going to go up ('ala) to?" is disingenuous. They knew where, because the scouts had already mapped it out; that was the whole point of their going up ('ala) into the land (v24). Their misery was self-imposed for it was a matter of their choice not to go up, not of ignorance or mishap.

Their cry of dismay is all the more appalling by the blatant denial of their own part in the debacle; instead, they foisted the blame onto the scouts, "Our brothers have made us lose heart."

Here was a molten moment when the leaders could, and should, have shown of what mettle they were made. They should have stepped forward and showed that they indeed were capable of hearing out any dispute without favour or fear. Instead, they showed themselves wanting. They let the fear of men, even if those men were Anakites, swamp them. Here, they failed to exercise the judgment that belongs to God. And they continued to show their want in the rest of the debacle. Like the Emperor and His New Clothes, they were naked!

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