Forty Years in the Wilderness

At Kadesh-barnea the Israelites refuse to enter Canaan after their scouts report on it, and are sentenced to wander until that generation has died. Forty years after leaving Egypt their children camp opposite Jericho.

In the second year after leaving Egypt, Numbers says, the Israelites broke camp at Sinai and moved on towards the wilderness of Paran, with the ark carried ahead of them (Numbers 10:11–12) (Numbers 10:33–36). On the way Miriam and Aaron challenged the standing of Moses; Miriam was struck with leprosy and kept outside the camp for seven days (Numbers 12:1–15).

From the wilderness of Paran Moses sent twelve men, one from each tribe, to scout the land of Canaan (Numbers 13:1–3) (Numbers 13:17–20). After forty days they came back to the camp at Kadesh with a cluster of grapes that two men carried between them on a pole. The land was rich, they said, but its people were strong and its cities fortified (Numbers 13:23–29). Caleb urged an immediate advance. The others said it could not be done (Numbers 13:30–33).

The people wept and talked of choosing a leader to take them back to Egypt. Caleb and Joshua pleaded with them and were nearly stoned (Numbers 14:1–10). Moses interceded, and the people were spared. But the sentence was that everyone counted in the census, from twenty years old upward, would die in the wilderness, except Caleb and Joshua. Their children would wander for forty years, a year for each day of the scouting (Numbers 14:11–35). An attempt to invade without Moses or the ark was beaten back (Numbers 14:39–45). Deuteronomy names the place of the refusal as Kadesh-barnea (Deuteronomy 1:19–40).

Numbers tells little of the years that followed. It records the revolt of Korah, Dathan and Abiram against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16:1–3) (Numbers 16:31–35), and then finds the people at Kadesh again, where Miriam died (Numbers 20:1). When water ran short there, Moses struck the rock with his staff. He and Aaron were told that they too would not enter the land (Numbers 20:2–13). Edom refused them passage (Numbers 20:14–21), and Aaron died on Mount Hor, leaving the priesthood to his son Eleazar (Numbers 20:22–29). When snakes killed many in the camp, Moses set a bronze serpent on a pole for the bitten to look at (Numbers 21:4–9). East of the Jordan the Israelites defeated the kings Sihon and Og (Numbers 21:21–35) and camped in the plains of Moab opposite Jericho (Numbers 22:1). By then, a second census found, no one counted at Sinai was left but Caleb and Joshua (Numbers 26:63–65).

Later Scripture treats these years as a warning. Psalm 95 recalls the generation that did not enter God’s rest (Psalm 95:7–11), and Hebrews and Paul apply the lesson to Christians (Hebrews 3:7–19) (1 Corinthians 10:1–6). John’s Gospel compares the lifting up of the serpent to the lifting up of the Son of Man (John 3:14–15).

How this is dated

Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.

The limits come from the Bible’s own count. Israel leaves Sinai on the twentieth day of the second month of the second year after the exodus (Numbers 10:11–12). Aaron dies on the first day of the fifth month of the fortieth year (Numbers 33:38), and Moses begins his last address on the first day of the eleventh month of that year (Deuteronomy 1:3). Deuteronomy counts thirty-eight years from Kadesh-barnea to the crossing of the brook Zered (Deuteronomy 2:14).

The calendar years depend on the date of the Exodus from Egypt: about 1445–1406 BC if it is put at about 1446 BC from (1 Kings 6:1) (Bryant G. Wood, “The Rise and Fall of the 13th-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48, 2005), or about 1259–1220 BC if it is put about 1260 BC under Ramesses II (Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 2003). No Egyptian record of the exodus is known, and many scholars doubt that an exodus on the scale the Bible describes took place; the note on the Exodus from Egypt sets out the question. Excavation at the oasis usually identified as Kadesh-barnea has uncovered fortresses of the tenth to sixth centuries BC and only slight earlier remains, whose date is debated: see Kadesh-barnea. Forty is a frequent round number in the Old Testament, and some scholars read it as a conventional figure for a generation and not an exact count; the question is reviewed by James K. Hoffmeier, “What Is the Biblical Date for the Exodus? A Response to Bryant Wood”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50 (2007), pp. 236–237. The timeline places the event at the earlier date and shows both.

Forty Years in the Wilderness

How this is dated

Primary sources

Scripture

In context

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