‏ Numbers 16:13-14

Dathan and Abiram Refuse to Come Up

Dathan and Abiram reject Moses as leader. They accuse him of being an incompetent leader. He has not brought them into a land flowing with milk and honey. On the contrary, they say that he has taken them out of a land flowing with milk and honey. They also accuse Moses of blinding the eyes of the people with beautiful promises, but nothing has come true. But it is exactly the other way around: people who have Egypt in their mind as a land that is flowing with milk and honey, are totally blind to God’s plan and are also totally blind to their own failures. They blind the eyes of others with their false talk.

Here Moses loses his patience. However, he does not express himself against his opponents but against the LORD. He does not take the law into his own hands. He leaves justice to the LORD. He asks the LORD not to regard their offering. With this he aligns them with Cain who came with a selfish offering and whose offering was not accepted by the LORD either (Gen 4:3; 5a).

He also pleads with God about the selflessness of his conduct. He has never enriched himself at their expense. And he never has done harm to them. He has never behaved like a ruler who demands of his subjects and oppresses them. Samuel, Nehemiah and Paul acted in the same way as Moses (1Sam 12:3-5; Neh 5:17-18; Acts 20:33).

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