Is it just me, or was the death of Aaron sad? Granted, he was told that he would not see the promised land for his part in disobedience at the waters of Meribah, and it's rather surprising that he made it so far when he had such an unpromising beginning at the Golden Calf incident. Still, it struck me as rather sad. Can you put yourself in his shoes? Marching up to the top of Mount Hor, watching as your little brother devests you of your position and office as he instills them on your son, and then... dying. Thus ends Aaron. I know it wasn't quite like that, but it seems like a sad and anticlimatic end for a man who walked with Moses throughout the plagues, the Passover, the Red Sea, Mt. Sinai. Granted, he never held the position with the Lord that Moses did, and he definitely was fallible. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise: Aaron and Moses were well-advanced in years by this time. Maybe it was a release to be "let go" from serving such a stubborn people and to be gathered to his fathers. There aren't quite enough details in the passage to know.
Did you notice that we are beginning to see the wanderings of the people? It is passages like these that I think I need to keep a Bible atlas handy on the desk as I'm reading. I rather have a notion that they were criss-crossing paths with themselves as they went from place to place, but then again, maybe they wandered in circles. I don't know the geography of these locations well enough to know. I think tomorrow I'll pull out the maps.
Tomorrow's Reading: Numbers 22:1-41 (have you noticed we're more than halfway through Numbers now?)
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