Memory Lane

In Numbers 14, the people finally get on God's last nerve with their complaining and their selective memories of "the good old days" back in Egypt. And like so many parents on extended road trips, God decides to turn the car around. In 14:25, God tells Moses, "Turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Re[e]d Sea." The textual notes in the NOAB suggest, and rightly so, that God is allowing them to turn back toward Egypt indeed, but I think there is more to it than that. God is taking the people back to the scene of one of the most dramatic divine acts, and reminding the people of what the Lord has done for them. Remember back to Exodus 15, and the songs they sang? I like to think that became a prototypical hymn for the people of Israel, and that they had been so inculcated with it by then that a return to the Reed Sea would shame them. They had turned against a faithful God; a God who had not held back deliverance from them.