their appetites and submitting themselves to God’s will, they were discontented, and were always complaining and murmuring. They did not possess the virtue of temperance.
Doubts about faith. Moses and Aaron did not doubt Almighty God’s power, but, for one moment, they doubted His mercy. They were righteously angry when they perceived that the new generation of Israelites, who from their youth up had witnessed the miracles of God, and who had been daily fed with manna, should be as wavering and refractory as their fathers had been before them. They felt that these thankless people were not worthy that God should again perform a miracle for their benefit. But God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and His mercy is infinitely great. God, who is the very truth, had said: “Speak to the rock and it shall yield waters”; so they ought to have believed unconditionally and not doubted for a single moment. Anyhow, their doubt was a sin.
Venial sins. Wilful unbelief is a grievous sin. But as the doubt of Moses and Aaron was only a passing one, and as they did not give their full consent to it, but, in spite of it, obeyed God’s command by going to the rock &c., their sin was not mortal, but only venial: nevertheless they were severely punished for it. If a person has laboured for a long time to attain a certain object and has nearly reached it, it would be a very severe trial to him to be told that he must renounce it. Moses and Aaron had during forty years trained the Israelites and prepared them for their entrance into the Promised Land; they longed to complete their work and return to the land of their forefathers. But now, at the end of their labour, care and toil, they were told that they must die without setting foot in the long wished for country! It was indeed a severe punishment! But they humbly submitted to God’s will, and preferred to expiate their sin in this world rather than in the next. This severe punishment of one venial sin teaches us to know and fear God’s justice, and shows us that even venial sin is a great evil, and must be expiated either here or in the world to come.
The intercession of the saints. The sinful people knew well that they did not deserve that their petition should be heard by God; therefore they begged His faithful servant, Moses, to intercede for them, and to him God hearkened. For this same reason we call on the Saints in heaven, the friends of God, to intercede for us.
The brazen serpent, a type of our crucified Lord. The brazen serpent set up on a pole is a type of our Divine Saviour. He Himself, in His discourse with Nicodemus, told him that it was so (New Test. XV): “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” As the brazen serpent was raised up on high, so Jesus Christ (who, by the mouth of David, said of Himself: “I am
