A study of 1 Corinthians 10:9–10
“Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.” — 1 Corinthians 10:9–10
Why was it so devastating that so many died for what they were doing? In the incident of the fiery serpents, Israel was refusing God, yet He did not abandon them completely. They still had their food and water, and He gave them the serpent on a pole. All they had to do was look. So what exactly were they refusing, why did so many perish, and what does Paul want us to learn from it?
What They Were Refusing
Paul identifies who they were really testing: Christ Himself. In Numbers 21:5 the people called the manna “light bread” and said their soul loathed it. The Hebrew word (qeloqel) means contemptible or worthless. But the manna was the bread from heaven, the very symbol Jesus claims for Himself in John 6. They were not simply complaining about the menu. They were despising the Life-giver, preferring the memory of Egypt, the house of bondage, to the One who had carried them for forty years.
In Patriarchs and Prophets (ch. 38, “The Journey Around Edom”), Ellen White notes that God had been shielding His people from the serpents that filled that wilderness all along. When they wanted His presence gone, He stepped back and the protection lifted. Yet He immediately provided the remedy. She also observes that many died because they would not look; they thought it foolish that gazing at a brass image could heal, and they perished in their unbelief. The deaths were not God filling a quota. They were the fruit of refusing the only healing offered, the same healing Jesus points to in John 3:14–15.
Numbers 21:6 gives no count, only that “much people of Israel died.” Paul’s surrounding verses give figures for other incidents: 23,000 at Baal-peor in verse 8 (Numbers 25:9 records 24,000, likely the full total versus a single day), and 14,700 in the plague after Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16:49), the likely event behind verse 10. Paul’s word “the destroyer” echoes the destroyer of the Passover (Exodus 12:23), the destroying power God holds back until His restraint is rejected.
Correcting the Timeline
It is easy to picture the serpents early in the wilderness story, but they come at its very close, in the fortieth year. Numbers 20 opens with Miriam’s death; Moses strikes the rock; Aaron dies at Mount Hor (dated by Numbers 33:38 to the fortieth year). Then comes the long detour around Edom, and there the serpents strike.
This means the people murmuring were mostly the children, a generation that had eaten manna every day of their lives and never known a day without God’s provision. They had watched their parents fall in the wilderness for this very spirit, and they repeated it almost word for word. Deuteronomy 2:14 says the old generation was wholly consumed by the time Israel crossed the brook Zered, and that crossing appears in Numbers 21:12, just a few verses after the serpents. Some of the last of the first generation may have died in that very incident, but the younger generation clearly joined the complaint. Those under twenty at Kadesh were not under their parents’ sentence; if they died, it was from their own refusal to look.
Baal-peor (Numbers 25) settles the matter for the second generation. It happened after the Zered, when the old generation was already gone, and 24,000 died. The children had absorbed their parents’ spirit and faced their own reckoning. Growing up surrounded by God’s provision did not automatically produce trust. Each generation had to choose for itself whether to look and live.
The Trigger: A Closed Door and a Long Way Around
Israel was finally ready to move toward Canaan. Moses asked Edom, their own kin through Esau, for passage on the King’s Highway, promising not to touch a field or drink from a well without paying. Edom refused and came out armed (Numbers 20:14–21). So instead of heading toward the Promised Land, Israel had to turn back south “by the way of the Red Sea” to go all the way around Edom (21:4), marching back toward where they had started, through some of the hottest and most barren country in the region.
The timing made it harder. They had just buried Aaron and mourned him thirty days, and they had just won a real victory over the king of Arad at Hormah (21:1–3). Then, right after that high point, came the long, hot, backward-feeling road. “The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way” (21:4). The Hebrew literally says they grew short, impatient.
Their complaint contradicts itself: “Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread” (21:5). They said there was no bread, then complained about the bread they had. And they spoke “against God, and against Moses,” putting God first, which is why Paul says they tempted Christ. God often allows a crisis so we can see what is in our hearts. This crisis was a disappointment rather than a real lack: a delay, a closed door, a road that seemed to lead away from the promise. What it exposed was whether they would trust the One leading them when the route did not make sense.
Verse 10: The Parents’ Murmuring
Verse 10 does not name its incident, but the strongest candidate is the murmuring after Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16:41–49). The day after the earth swallowed Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and fire consumed the 250 princes, the congregation gathered against Moses and Aaron: “Ye have killed the people of the LORD.” They sided with the rebels and blamed God’s servants for the judgment. A plague broke out, and 14,700 died. Then comes one of the most moving pictures in the Old Testament: Aaron runs into the midst of the people with his censer, and “he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed.” The destroying power was at work in the camp, and the intercession of the priest stopped it, a beautiful type of Christ.
Numbers does not date Korah’s rebellion, but Ellen White places it early in the thirty-eight years of wandering (Patriarchs and Prophets, ch. 35). The other candidate is Numbers 14, where the whole congregation murmured after the spies’ report and the ten spies died by plague (14:36–37). Paul may have both in mind; murmuring runs like a thread through the whole wilderness story.
The first generation’s trigger is spelled out, and it was fear of the future. At Kadesh the spies reported walled cities and giants: “we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.” The people wept all night and feared most for their families: “our wives and our children should be a prey” (14:3). The painful irony is that those very children were the ones God brought in. Then, after the sentence, they swung to the opposite error and attacked without God, and were routed (14:40–45). They would not go when He said go, and then went when He said stay.
Korah’s rebellion grew out of that disappointment. On the surface it was ambition over the priesthood, but Dathan and Abiram called Egypt “a land that floweth with milk and honey” and accused Moses of failing to bring them into Canaan (16:13–14). They blamed Moses for the sentence their own unbelief had caused.
Two Generations, the Same Words
Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians 10 spans both generations. The golden calf (v. 7) and the murmuring of verse 10 come from the parents; Baal-peor (v. 8) and the serpents (v. 9) come from their children forty years later. Both generations stood at the border of Canaan, and both said almost the same words:
“Would God that we had died in this wilderness! . . . were it not better for us to return into Egypt?” — the parents at Kadesh (Numbers 14:2–3)
“Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” — their children, forty years later (Numbers 21:5)
Same doubt of God’s intentions, same longing for Egypt, same place on the map. That is the heart of Paul’s warning: “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition . . . Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (vv. 11–12). And verse 13 follows with the hope: God is faithful, and will with the temptation also make a way to escape. The brass serpent was exactly that way of escape.
Fear at the Threshold
For the second generation, the text names only the detour and the discouragement. But there may have been more beneath the surface. That final year was full of loss and transition. Miriam died. Aaron died, and his garments passed to Eleazar. Moses himself had just been told he would not enter the land (20:12). The familiar leaders who had carried them all their lives were being taken away. Edom met them with an army, and Arad attacked them; after decades of relative quiet, they were suddenly facing war. And Canaan meant the end of the only life they had ever known. Joshua 5:12 notes that the manna stopped the day after they ate the produce of the land. No more bread falling from heaven each morning; they would have to fight, plant, and harvest.
The wilderness had become home. It was hard, but it was known. Moving forward meant grief, uncertainty, and responsibility, and the detour gave that unease an outlet. Scripture does not state this motive outright, so it is an application rather than the text’s explicit words, but it fits the pattern of both generations. We do the same. We grow comfortable in the stages and places God brings us to for growth and healing, and when He knows we are ready for the next step, we balk and think we are perfectly fine where we are. The same God who was ready to move them forward was the One they accused of leading them to die, when He was actually leading them into the promise.
Timeline of the Wilderness Journey
The first generation’s failures fall in the first two years or so; the second generation’s are packed into the fortieth year, within about ten months. Between lie some thirty-eight mostly silent years.
| When | Event | Scripture | 1 Cor 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1, month 1 | Exodus and Passover | Exodus 12 | |
| Year 1, month 2 | Manna begins | Exodus 16 | v. 3 |
| Year 1 | Golden calf; about 3,000 die | Exodus 32 | v. 7 |
| Year 2 | Quail and lusting; graves of craving | Numbers 11 | v. 6 |
| Year 2 | Spies at Kadesh; 40-year sentence | Numbers 13–14 | v. 10 (?) |
| Early wandering | Korah’s rebellion; plague, 14,700 die | Numbers 16 | v. 10 |
| ~38 years | Wandering, largely unrecorded; the old generation dies off | Numbers 33 | |
| Year 40, month 1 | Back at Kadesh; Miriam dies; water from the rock; Moses barred from Canaan | Numbers 20 | v. 4 |
| Year 40 | Edom refuses passage | Numbers 20:14–21 | |
| Year 40, month 5 | Aaron dies at Mount Hor | Num. 20:22–29; 33:38 | |
| Year 40 | Victory over Arad at Hormah | Numbers 21:1–3 | |
| Year 40 | Detour around Edom; fiery serpents and the brass serpent | Numbers 21:4–9 | v. 9 |
| Year 40 | Cross the Zered; old generation gone | Num. 21:12; Deut. 2:14 | |
| Year 40 | Sihon and Og defeated | Numbers 21:21–35 | |
| Year 40 | Balaam; Baal-peor, 24,000 die | Numbers 22–25 | v. 8 |
| Year 40 | Second census: only Caleb and Joshua remain | Numbers 26:64–65 | |
| Year 40, month 11 | Moses’ final addresses; Moses dies | Deut. 1:3; 34 | |
| Year 41, month 1 | Cross the Jordan; manna ceases | Joshua 4:19; 5:12 |
The last column marks the verse in 1 Corinthians 10 that refers to the event. Verse 4 (“that Rock was Christ”) spans both generations, since water came from the rock at the start (Exodus 17) and again in the fortieth year.
The Human Side
We often forget the humanity of these people when we study them. The first generation were broken slaves, and their children were only one generation out of slavery, raised on their parents’ vivid memories of it. That is a great deal to rise above. God can do the healing if we will allow Him to, and the record shows how patient and understanding He was with them.
Scripture itself acknowledges their fragility. At the very start God led them the long way rather than through Philistine country, “lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt” (Exodus 13:17). Deuteronomy 8:2–4 describes the forty years as a time to humble them, to prove them, to know what was in their hearts, and to teach them that man does not live by bread alone, while their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. In a real sense it was a forty-year rest from the troubles of life, a time to find their emotional feet and grow up before the final push into the land. Hosea 11:3–4 has God saying, “I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms . . . I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.” He was teaching them to walk.
Most of the second generation were born in the wilderness and never knew slavery firsthand, though they grew up absorbing their parents’ fear and grief. Yet they had the chance their parents lacked: a childhood fed by God’s hand every morning. And to their credit, they did cross the Jordan and take the land. Joshua 24:31 says Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him. It was the generation after them that “knew not the LORD” (Judges 2:10). The healing took hold for a time, but it was not passed on, and as history shows, the nation as a whole never truly found its footing.
Look and Live
That may be the sharpest lesson of all. Healing and maturity are not inherited. Each generation, and each person, must come to know God for themselves. That is Paul’s point to the Corinthians, and it is why Jesus pointed back to the brass serpent: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14–15).
God was completely patient with them, and He is with us. We have their example of what they did and how God stayed with them through it all. We must learn from them, or we are bound to repeat their mistakes. The remedy is still lifted up. All we have to do is look.
