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"The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way."

I. THE ACTUAL REASON FOR DISCOURAGEMENT. Discouragement and trouble of mind because of the difficulties of life is of course very common, but a great deal depends on where the difficulties come from. Here we are plainly told the discouragement arose because of the way.

1. It appears to have been a bad bit of the road in itself. None of the way over which the Israelites had traveled since they left Egypt could be called easy. They had begun with a strange experience, marching through the depths of the sea, and ever since they had wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. For forty years they had been accustomed to wilderness life, but the district through which they were now passing is, by the description of travelers, desolate and repellent in an extraordinary degree. So the course of the Christian, all the way through, is subject to external difficulties and hardships, and the more faithful he is, the more these may abound, add at certain stages they may be so increased and intensified as to become well nigh intolerable. Discouraged by different things at different times, there may come a time to us, as to Israel, when we shall be especially discouraged because of the way.

2. It came as a sort of rebuff after God had given them special encouragement. For forty years they had been under chastisement, a doomed, dying, hopeless generation, but recently God had brought them back to Kadesh, and made the dry, forbidding rock to pour forth plenteously for the thirst of man and beast. Man is easily lifted up by anything that satisfies his senses, and gives him a visible support, and when it subsides he is correspondingly depressed. The desolate district through which the people passed probably looked all the worse because of the hopes which had been excited in them at Meribah.

3. It was particularly vexatious because they had been turned out of a more direct way. They were compassing the land of Edom, because brother Edom, of whom Israel expected kinder things, had closed the way through his land with a drawn sword. Even though the road had been pleasanter in itself, the very fact that it was circuitous was enough to cause some annoyance.

II. THIS ACTUAL REASON WAS NOT SUFFICIENT. It was natural enough, to some extent excusable, but not a reason worthy of the people of God.

1. It pointed to purely external difficulties. It was by no fault of Israel that it found itself in this cheerless and starving place. Canaan was not a land easy to get into, and the Israelites had been shut up to this road, difficult as it was. We dishonour God greatly when we are discouraged by difficulties rising entirely outside of ourselves. The less of help and comfort we can discern with the eyes of sense, the more we should discern those unfailing comforts and resources which come through a childlike dependence upon God. The Israelites wanted a Habakkuk among them to say, "Though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."

2. There was a negligent and ungrateful omission to consider reasons for encouragement. Even if the way was hard, it was a mercy there was a way at all. The way through Edom, direct and easy as it looked, might have proved both tedious and perilous in the end. God knows the way of the righteous, even when the righteous himself scarcely knows it. Bad as the way was, it is called the way of the Red Sea, and the very sight of those memorable waters should have brought to mind, and kept in mind, an unparalleled instance of God's guiding and delivering power.

3. The discouragement because of the way prevented other and weightier reasons for discouragement from being felt. The state of the heart within should have caused far more depression and anxiety than the state of the world without. We know the people themselves were in a bad state of heart, for the words of murmuring prove it. Whatever hopes the gushing waters of Meribah had raised were carnal, and found no sympathy with God. There are two states of heart on which we may be sure he looks with approval.

(1) When his people, in spite of the way, surrounded by poverty, sickness, and all the circumstances of a cold, unsympathetic world, are nevertheless courageous, trustful, grateful, cheerful.

(2) When his people, with everything in their circumstances pleasant and attractive, are nevertheless utterly cast down because of the proofs they daily get of the power of inbred sin. To trust God, in spite of the badness of the way, and to distrust and abhor self, in spite of the comforts of the way - be it our care to attain and preserve these states of mind as long as they are needed. Robert Hall has a sermon on verse 4. - Y.

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KJV: And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.

WEB: They traveled from Mount Hor by the way to the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.