As we near the end of the number scroll, Yahweh leads Moses to the top of a mountain, where

he can look out onto the land that is promised to Israel, a new garden land.

A land he will not personally get to enter.

Then Yahweh selects Moses' protégé, the new leader of Israel, because the congregation

are like animals that need a shepherd.

The job goes to a man named Joshua.

A man described as being filled with the spirit of wisdom.

Now there's only three other times in the Hebrew Bible where the spirit of wisdom fills

a human.

The third time that this phrase appears in Isaiah 11 describing a future branch, a little

offshoot from the family line of David that will sprout up one day in the future.

This figure is going to bring justice on the nations, bring peace between humans and animals,

and he's going to bring God's people to dwell so that there is no pain or destruction

in all God's holy mountain, because all the earth will be filled up with knowing Yahweh.

You see so far it's been Moses who shines with God's splendor.

Moses mediates between God and man.

Moses is the leader who will rescue Israel.

Moses is the closest we've gotten to a delivering Messiah.

But now that torch is being passed to Joshua.

And so now Joshua is going to be the next main character on the stage who starts filling

out even more the portrait of the kind of deliver that God's people need to bring them

into the land, to plant them in the new Eden land.

...