Texts in Conversation
In Numbers, God sentences Israel to wander forty years, one year for each day the spies explored the land. In the Shepherd of Hermas, an angel applies a similar day-for-year pattern to each person, and every day of indulgence brings a year of punishment.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Numbers 14:34
Hebrew Bible
28 Say to them, ‘As I live, says the Lord, I will surely do to you just what you have spoken in my hearing. 29 Your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness—all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me. 30 You will by no means enter into the land where I swore to settle you. The only exceptions are Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 31 But I will bring in your little ones, whom you said would become victims of war, and they will enjoy the land that you have despised. 32 But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, 33 and your children will wander in the wilderness 40 years and suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your dead bodies lie finished in the wilderness. 34 According to the number of the days you have investigated this land, 40 days—one day for a year—you will suffer for your iniquities, 40 years, and you will know what it means to thwart me. 35 I, the Lord, have said, “I will surely do so to all this evil congregation that has gathered together against me. In this wilderness they will be finished, and there they will die!”’”
Shepherd of Hermas 64:4
Early Christian
1 I said to him, “Sir, explain one more thing to me.” “What are you asking now?” he said. “Sir,” I said, “are those who live in self-indulgence and are deceived punished for as long as they lived in self-indulgence and deception?” He said to me, “They are punished for the same length of time.” 2 “Then, Sir,” I said, “they undergo very mild punishments; for those who live like that, forgetting God, ought to be punished sevenfold.” 3 He said to me, “You are foolish, and do not understand the power of the punishment.” “True,” I said, “for if I had understood, I would not have asked you to tell me.” “Listen,” he said, “to the power of both self-indulgence and the punishment. 4 The time of self-indulgence and deceit is one hour. But one hour of punishment has the power of thirty days. So if someone lives in self-indulgence and is deceived for one day, and is punished for one day, the day of punishment is equal to a whole year. For every day a person lives in self-indulgence, he is punished for a year. You see then,” he said, “that the time of self-indulgence and deceit is very short, but the time of punishment and torment is long.”
Search:
Notes and References
“... Suitability of the punishment to fit the crime is an important component of contemporary ideas of retribution. Here the question is compatibility of time, and it must be remembered that it is not otherworldly but this-worldly torment [...] that is envisioned (v. 1). [...] Verse 4 gives a mathematical formula based on a twelve-hour day of activity, and explains that the amount of suffering is appropriate to the amount of transgression [...] Twelve hours times thirty days = 360 days, or approximately a year. The figures are rhetorical estimates. [...] day-to-year correspondence for punishment, Num 14:34 ...”
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.
User Comments
,