4 - The Sense of an Ending

Summary

This chapter is a reading of the scouts episode (Numbers 13–14). It begins life within the triumphant annalistic version of the wilderness narrative as a positive reconnaissance mission that preceded the conquest of Canaan in Numbers 21. It became a complaint episode when the wilderness narrative was reemplotted as a tragedy, with key features as defined by Aristotle, including error, reversal, recognition, and pathos, as well as a character (Caleb) who steps into the action in order to offer perspective that might help avoid a pathetic ending. The allegorical mode of the wilderness narrative remains active, as Caleb represents Zerubbabel, the Davidide in whom Haggai and Zechariah placed their hope for a restored temple. The return of an actual king was unlikely under Persian rule, but the tragic version of the wilderness narrative uses kingship discourse in order to frame this vision in terms of land, as the series of independent inheritances in Joshua 18–19 is transformed into a bounded territory dominated by Judah and inflected with Davidic resonances.