Five-minute study · Day 181 · Numbers 14
Numbers 14:18
A word worth stopping on: forgiving נָשָׂא nasa
Moses is quoting God back to God. The spies have returned with their report, the people have panicked, and the LORD has threatened to strike the entire nation with pestilence. Moses steps between a terrified people and an angry God, and his argument is stunning: he recites the words God spoke at Sinai. 'The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression.' The word translated 'forgiving' is nasa. It means to lift, to carry. Moses is asking God to pick up the sin of an entire nation and carry it away.
Word study: forgiving
- Hebrew
- נָשָׂא
- Pronounced
- nasa
- Strong's
- H5375
- Definition
- To lift, to carry, to bear, to take away. When applied to sin, it means to bear away iniquity, to remove it by carrying it.
Nasa appears 654 times in the Hebrew Bible. BDB organizes its meanings under several headings: to lift, to carry, to take, to bear. The word describes physical actions: lifting a stone (Genesis 29:1), carrying a load (Numbers 11:14), raising one's eyes (Genesis 13:10). Its range is enormous. A river 'lifts up' its waves (Psalm 93:3). A tree 'bears' fruit. A donkey 'carries' a burden.
When nasa is applied to sin, the image is physical. Sin is a weight. Forgiving means picking up that weight and removing it. The forgiver becomes the porter. The one who nasa's iniquity takes the load off the offender's back and carries it away.
The theological weight of Numbers 14:18 deepens when you see what Moses is doing. He is quoting Exodus 34:6-7, the passage where God revealed his character to Moses on Sinai after the golden calf disaster. Levine's Anchor Bible commentary on Numbers notes that this is Torah's internal cross-referencing at its most sophisticated. Moses learned God's character in Exodus 34. Now, in a parallel crisis, he holds God to those words. The argument is: You told me who you are. Be who you said.
The Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus 16 dramatizes nasa. The scapegoat literally 'bears' (nasa) the iniquities of the people into the wilderness. The animal carries what the people cannot. The verb is the same. The image is the same. Sin is a burden. Someone else takes it up.
Isaiah 53:4 uses nasa for the Servant: 'Surely he hath borne (nasa) our griefs, and carried our sorrows.' The suffering Servant does what the scapegoat did. He lifts the weight. He carries it away. The verb that began as a description of donkeys and porters becomes the central verb of substitutionary atonement.
Historical context · Wilderness period, approximately 1400 BC
Quoting God Back to God
The crisis of Numbers 14 is the defining failure of the Exodus generation. Ten of twelve spies report that the land of Canaan is unconquerable. The people weep all night, threaten to stone Moses and Aaron, and propose electing a new leader to take them back to Egypt. The LORD appears and declares he will destroy the nation and start over with Moses.
Moses' response is one of the most remarkable prayers in Scripture. He does not deny the people's guilt. He does not minimize the rebellion. He builds his entire appeal on God's own self-revelation. In Exodus 34:6-7, after the golden calf incident, God passed before Moses and proclaimed his name: 'The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.'
Moses memorized those words. Months or years later, standing in the desert with a mutinous congregation behind him and divine wrath before him, he plays those words back. 'The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression.' The phrasing is not identical to Exodus 34; Moses abbreviates. He pulls out the attributes most relevant to this moment.
The tactic reveals something about ancient Israelite prayer. It was textual. Worshippers brought God's own words into their petitions. They treated divine self-disclosure as a binding promise. Moses is saying, in effect: You described yourself this way. I am holding you to it.
God's response in Numbers 14:20 is immediate: 'I have pardoned according to thy word.' The Hebrew for 'pardoned' here is salach, a verb used exclusively for divine forgiveness. God responds to being quoted with the very action the quote requested.
For reflection
Moses' prayer was built entirely on words God had already spoken about himself. He brought no new argument, no justification for the people, no excuse. He brought God's own self-description and held it up. When you pray for mercy, do you bring your own reasoning, or do you bring God's own promises? Write down one specific promise from Scripture that you could bring to God in your current situation.
God responded to Moses' prayer by doing exactly what Moses quoted. The promise held.
Sources: BDB Lexicon; Levine, 'Numbers 1-20' (Anchor Bible); Milgrom, 'Numbers' (JPS Torah Commentary)