Scripture Daily

Context No. 626 of 4322 · Numbers

Context · Reflection

Numbers 17:6-13: in context

6Moses spoke to the children of Israel; and all their princes gave him rods, for each prince one, according to their fathers’ houses, a total of twelve rods. Aaron’s rod was among their rods. 7Moses laid up the rods before the LORD in the Tent of the Testimony. 8On the next day, Moses went into the Tent of the Testimony; and behold, Aaron’s rod for the house of Levi had sprouted, budded, produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds. 9Moses brought out all the rods from before the LORD to all the children of Israel. They looked, and each man took his rod. 10The LORD said to Moses, “Put back the rod of Aaron before the covenant, to be kept for a token against the children of rebellion; that you may make an end of their complaining against me, that they not die.” 11Moses did so. As the LORD commanded him, so he did. 12The children of Israel spoke to Moses, saying, “Behold, we perish! We are undone! We are all undone! 13Everyone who keeps approaching the LORD’s tabernacle, dies! Will we all perish?”

After a bitter dispute over who truly held God's calling to the priesthood, God chooses a strange way to settle it. Each tribe brings a rod, a staff, a dead piece of wood, twelve in all, with Aaron's among them, and Moses lays them up overnight before the LORD. The next morning, one of the rods is transformed. Aaron's staff, God says, had not merely been marked in some way; it had sprouted, put forth buds, produced blossoms, and borne ripe almonds. Overnight, a dead stick had run through the entire cycle of living growth, from bud to blossom to fruit. God did not settle the dispute with an argument or a display of force in the usual sense. He settled it by bringing life out of a dead branch.

That is a beautiful sign, and worth dwelling on beyond the question of the priesthood. The mark of God's genuine choosing and God's genuine work, here, is life springing from deadness, blossom and fruit appearing where there was only a dry, lifeless stick. All twelve rods were equally dead; only the one God had chosen came alive. It is a small picture of one of God's deepest specialties: bringing life, growth, and fruit out of what is dead and dry, doing overnight in a dead branch what no amount of human effort could produce. The dead stick did not make itself bloom; God made it bloom.

That speaks to the places in me and in my life that feel like Aaron's rod before the morning, dry, lifeless, finished, incapable of producing anything. A relationship that seems dead, a hope that has withered, a part of my own soul that feels barren and past reviving. The budding rod says the God who made a dead stick blossom and bear almonds overnight is exactly the God who brings life out of deadness. Do I believe that God can make the dead, dry places in me and my life bud and blossom and bear fruit again, the way he did Aaron's rod, or have I written them off as too far gone for the God who specializes in life from death?

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