Once again, the Israelites bemoan their fate and say they would be better off back in Egypt. Once again God hears them and resolves to kill every last one of them for their lack of faith and start the race over with Moses, and once again Moses talks Him down. This time the people get so far as to start planning to stone Moses and Aaron and choose a new man to lead them back to Egypt.
Moses says that if God kills all the Israelites, then the Egyptians and other nations will hear about it and say that it’s a sign of God’s weakness, that He couldn’t lead them to the promised land.
God settles on only killing the men who came back giving a scary report of the new land, everyone who was sent out except for Caleb and Hoshea. Moses called Hoshea Joshua, by the way, which means God, salvation, possibly God is salvation or God’s salvation. The name Joshua later evolved into the name Jesus.
The Lord also said that the Israelites had rejected His gift of this land so they could no longer have it. They were cursed to wander the desert for another forty years until the current generation was dead, then their children could come back and try this again.
The people then decided that they would very much like to invade Caanan rather than camp in the desert for the rest of their lives so they ran out to try to conquer the first hill they came across. Moses warned them not to go, and that God was not with them, so they were immediately routed by the Amalakites.
God lays down some more offerings that must be paid when the Israelites eventually enter their land. More importantly though, the sacrificial system is clarified so that there is a procedure for absolving accidental sins, but any intentional sins get you cut off from the people. I guess some people must have started to figure out that they could go fornicate with each other’s wives as long as they made the right sacrifices afterward. Now anyone who intentionally sins is banished, or worse. Some guy is caught gathering firewood on the Sabbath and God commands Moses to have him stoned.
God did warn Moses at the outset that if He traveled with them, their disobedience and wickedness would be unbearable to Him and He would likely destroy them all.
There are many laws now, so everyone is supposed to wear tassels on their cloths to remind them of all the rules. They should all have a blue cord running through them, which probably had some kind of cultural significance. Some jews still wear this.
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