I gotta have my orange juice.

Pastor Peter Jones highlights that there are Edenic references in Numbers 13-14, including:

• Things evaluated as being good (13:19) and very good (14:7)
• The presence of a singular tree (13:20)
• A rich and fruitful land
• The taking of that fruit (13:20)
• Failure to trust in the goodness of God
• The repetition of land and ascend

With this framework, the entire sequence is a kind of new fall into sin, and in this light the attempted conquest at the end of Numbers 14 is especially an attempt to seize forbidden fruit out of its time. What is fascinating to me is that the time of forbiddenness is stacked on top of the time of permission. Surprisingly, this too is a repetition of Genesis, where God first declares that “every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food” (1:29) and only later excludes the tree of knowledge of good and evil (2:17). I agree with Jordan and others that God intended Adam and Eve eventually to mature (consider how the Bible identifies “knowledge of good and evil” with “wisdom”) to the point of eating from this tree. The parallel here in Numbers suggests to me that that permission might have been granted immediately if Adam and Eve had faced the serpent’s temptation faithfully.

The connection with bread is also interesting. Joshua declares that the Canaanites will be bread for Israel (14:9). Bread also appears in Genesis 3 as part of the curse; bread earned by sweat. The implication is that God is the provider of bread, but our obedience to him determines whether that bread will be earned with sweat.