Aaron is dead. The man who was our High Priest for nearly 40 years.  He interceded for us with God for all of that time – an incredibly heavy responsibility.

Yet despite that position of leadership, he was a man who seemed to prefer to fill a supporting role rather than being a leader. Perhaps at times he was a little too easily led; nevertheless, he was a man who loved God and his nation.

He was also the man who did the bravest thing I ever saw.

His death started me thinking back over my life, especially since I know that my own death must be coming soon – our 40 years in the wilderness are nearly complete, and by then, all of us who were over the age of 20 on that long-ago day must be dead.

Approaching death tends to make one reminisce, I suppose, particularly if one is blessed with young ones around who enjoy stories, as in my case. My grandchildren are ever ready for a story, and I have plenty to tell, and little time left to tell them. So many amazing things have happened during these years in the wilderness, and the end of our time in Egypt was likewise far from uneventful.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see what fools we were to turn our backs on the inheritance God promised merely because of frightening reports of giants in the land. He has slain so many ‘giants’ for us that we had no valid reason to doubt – but doubt we did, and we have paid the price since. For myself, I have tried to teach my grandchildren of God’s greatness through the stories they love to hear, in the hope that, when it is their turn to enter and possess the land, they will be more ready than we were.

So many stories.

Some are good for the younger ones because they can be turned into fun; a bit of a game – like the plague of frogs. It certainly wasn’t funny at the time, but the little ones love to hear of the look on Grandma’s face when she took a bite of bread and found most of a frog in the part still left in her hand – and the rest obviously in her mouth! They also like to come up with peculiar places frogs might have got into, though I’m not sure they’ve ever seen frogs for themselves.

Others are good for the older ones – like the triumphant crossing of the Red Sea. The way we crossed the cloven sea is an impressive story in itself, but the boys love the destruction of those diabolical Egyptians, and the girls always enjoy Miriam’s singing and dancing afterwards. Or the day we fought the Amalekites – and beat them as long as Moses kept his arms raised towards God. Of course, that always leads to competitions of who can hold their arms up longest!

Many more are really warnings rather than stories to enjoy – though I have to make them interesting somehow or else the children will stop coming to listen! Times when we as a nation have been punished by God for our unfaithfulness: the golden calf, the quails, the fiery serpents, and the incident which triggered that response of Aaron’s that I have called the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.

You see, it started when a group of men decided to challenge Moses and Aaron. Now I don’t say that Moses and Aaron are perfect leaders, but they have done a good job. And it’s certainly not a job I would ever want – nor can I imagine how anyone else could want such a thankless task as leading a nation that is constantly complaining!

Some people, though, seem to want power without considering the responsibilities that come along with it, and Korah, Dathan and Abiram were like that.

They went to Moses and Aaron and said, “We’re holy just like you, and God is among us, so what makes you think you’ve got any right to boss us around?” – or words to that effect.

I don’t know quite how I’d react to a challenge like that, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be a gentle response!

Moses, on the other hand, left it entirely up to God, saying that God himself would show the whole congregation whom he had chosen. And he did, too – but I don’t want to go into that right now; it’s a whole ’nother story. The upshot, though, was that the men who had rebelled against Moses and Aaron were killed by God the next morning. I think we were all in shock the whole rest of that day, absorbing what had happened – but it couldn’t last.

The following day, there was a mass meeting protesting against Moses and Aaron, claiming that they had killed God’s people. Incidentally, the claim was patently absurd, as the manner of those deaths had been such as to leave no doubt that it had been God’s hand at work, not man’s – but logic has never been known to make much difference to a crowd, and it didn’t that day either. Apparently, though, God had finally had enough of our grumblings, complaints and whinging, because all of a sudden, his cloud came down and covered the tent of meeting, while his glory filled it. Moses and Aaron were called to the tent, and as they went, I heard cries beginning not too far from where I stood and rippling through the crowd towards me.

Such cries! Panic, horror, pain, terror – all were there. And let me tell you, when you hear sounds like that, you don’t hurry to see what’s going on, you run for your life in the opposite direction – but in this case there were thousands of people in the way. If people had been able to move enough to get up some momentum, there would have been a stampede to end all stampedes. But no one could run, all they could do was to edge away as urgently as possible. And the cries grew closer. The few intelligible shouts I could hear seemed to be saying something about a plague, and it was clearly striking people down in their thousands.

Then it happened. Moses and Aaron spoke briefly, and Aaron grabbed his censer, putting fire in it from the altar. Then, instead of running away, he approached the teeming multitude. Right into to the middle of the unfolding disaster where the plague was sweeping through the crowd he strode, with people giving way before him. He took his stand in the very centre – standing between the dead and the living, holding back the plague.

Let me just point out a few things:

 

If that’s not brave, then I don’t know what is.

For what it’s worth, I thought at the time that maybe God had told him to do it, just as he had instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent to save us on another occasion. Obviously that would have reduced the courage required. However, I learned later that, far from instructing Aaron to intercede for us in that way, God had actually ordered Moses and Aaron to move away from us so that they would be saved while we were destroyed! Yes, our leaders chose to run directly counter to God’s instructions in an endeavour to save their people. Incredible!

All those close enough to see what was going on went silent and watched with bated breath as Aaron took his stand.

And as we waited and watched, the bubble of silence in which we stood gradually grew. The plague had evidently stopped spreading, because the frantic cries began to die down, almost as quickly as they had begun. The whole thing can have taken no more than a few minutes – but in that time 14,700 people died.

Fortunately for us, God honoured Aaron’s offering and the plague was stopped, or I’m sure that none of us would have survived except Moses and Aaron.

At last, Aaron returned to his brother by the tent, but we were all still too stunned at the events of the last few minutes for it to really sink in that we were out of danger – at least as long as we had the sense to stop our grumbling against Moses and Aaron. Eventually, we all slunk quietly back to our tents, afraid to approach the thousands of slain. However, it was a task that could not be left, and later that day, we began the monumental task of identifying and burying the dead. There was mourning both within the camp and outside, as all those who had been in contact with the dead bodies were forced to stay outside the camp for the next seven days until we were cleansed.

For those inside the camp, though, the next day saw a test being conducted to drive home the lesson that Moses and Aaron really were God’s chosen leaders – the leader of each tribe gave his staff to Moses, and all of the staffs, including Aaron’s as the leader of the tribe of Levi, were left in the tabernacle overnight. The following morning the staffs were brought out and displayed, and all were exactly as they had been except for Aaron’s – which had changed from a dead, dry stick into a living almond branch that had produced leaves, flowers and almonds! Moreover, it was apparently going to stay that way for a long time, because God told Moses to put it back in the tabernacle again to be produced as a reminder should anyone challenge Aaron again.

We can certainly be a stiff-necked and remarkably forgetful lot, but I don’t think anyone has been stupid enough over the years since to publicly challenge God’s leaders again after the events of those few days!

 

Other events stand out in my memory for other reasons, but in terms of bravery, nothing can surpass the man who risked death and defied God’s expressed desire in an attempt to save the nation God had chosen – a nation that, mere moments before, had been complaining about his leadership and calling him a murderer.

It really was the bravest thing I ever saw.