Catholic Commentary

Numbers 21:18–20

The Journey to Beer and the Song of the Well (Part 2)

¹⁸the well, which the princes dug, which the nobles of the people dug, with the scepter, and with their poles.” From the wilderness they traveled to Mattanah;¹⁹and from Mattanah to Nahaliel; and from Nahaliel to Bamoth;²⁰and from Bamoth to the valley that is in the field of Moab, to the top of Pisgah, which looks down on the desert.

What does Numbers 21:18–20 mean?

Numbers 21:18–20 describes Israel's journey through the Transjordanian wilderness, marking geographical stations from Beer through Mattanah, Nahaliel, Bamoth, and finally to Pisgah. The place-names encode a theological progression—gift, inheritance, and heights—that mirrors the Exodus narrative's pattern of divine provision, God's active leading, and Israel's ascent toward the Promised Land.

Key Insight

A well dug by princes with their scepters—authority bent to the work of giving life—marks the threshold between desert wandering and the promised inheritance.

Commentary

Numbers 21:18 — "The well which the princes dug"

The verse is the closing line of an ancient victory song (vv. 17–18), almost certainly preserved from Israel's lost "Book of the Wars of the LORD" (v. 14). The well at Beer ("be'er" in Hebrew simply means "well" or "cistern") is celebrated not merely as a geographical fact but as a monument of cooperative, noble labor. The "princes" (Hebrew: śārîm) and "nobles" (Hebrew: nĕdîbê hā'ām) dig with their staffs and scepters — instruments of authority turned to servanthood. This detail is charged with meaning: leadership here is expressed through manual, life-giving work on behalf of the whole community. The digging of the well is itself presented as a sacred act, prompted by God's command in v. 16 ("Gather the people together, and I will give them water"). The song is Israel's liturgical response to divine provision, sung to the well as though it were a living participant in the covenant drama.

The phrase "which the princes dug" also marks a contrast with an earlier Israelite failure. At Meribah (Num 20:2–13), Moses struck the rock in anger rather than speaking to it as commanded, and water still came — but in disobedience. Here, leadership and people act in harmony with God's instruction, and the result is celebrated in song. The mood has shifted from rebellion to thanksgiving.

Numbers 21:19 — Mattanah, Nahaliel, Bamoth

The place-names in v. 19 function on both a geographical and a typological level. Their precise locations remain uncertain to archaeologists, but their Hebrew meanings are spiritually luminous and almost certainly intentional in their arrangement:

Mattanah (מַתָּנָה): "gift" or "a giving." The water of Beer is itself a gift (mattanah) from God. The naming of the next station as "gift" suggests that Israel's journey is itself being presented as a continuous reception of divine generosity.
Nahaliel (נַחֲלִיאֵל): "torrent/wadi of God" or "God's inheritance." The Hebrew root nahal evokes both the rushing stream and the inheritance of land. This station implies that God's gift flows like a river — not stagnant but moving, active, carrying Israel toward its inheritance.
Bamoth (בָּמוֹת): "high places" or "heights." The journey literally ascends. From the gift, through God's flowing inheritance, Israel rises to the high places — a movement upward both geographically and spiritually.

This sequence — gift, inheritance, heights — is not accidental in the canonical shape of the text. The journey from Beer to Bamoth recapitulates the inner logic of the Exodus itself: God gives freely, leads his people through, and draws them upward.

Numbers 21:20 — The Valley, Pisgah, the Desert

From the heights of Bamoth, Israel is directed toward "the valley in the field of Moab," and then to the summit of Pisgah (Hebrew: hāpisgāh), which "looks down upon the desert" (hā-yĕšîmôn, literally "the wasteland" or "the desolation"). Pisgah is a spur of the Abarim range east of the Jordan. It will appear again with devastating poignancy at the end of Deuteronomy (34:1), when Moses climbs it to see the Promised Land he will never enter. Here, however, the reference is forward-looking and ominous in a different way: Israel now stands on the very threshold of Canaan, gazing back at the desert they have traversed and forward into promise.

The juxtaposition — valley below, summit above, wasteland behind — creates a powerful spatial theology. Israel's position on Pisgah is a liminal moment: they are between wilderness and inheritance, between death and life, between the old generation (now buried in the desert) and the new. The desert (yĕšîmôn) is not merely geography; it is a theological category — the place of trial, purification, and dependence on God (cf. Hos 2:14; Deut 8:2–3).

Catholic Commentary

Catholic tradition, following the fourfold sense of Scripture articulated by St. John Cassian and codified by the Catechism (CCC §§115–119), reads these verses on multiple levels simultaneously.

Allegorically, the well dug by princes with their scepters prefigures Baptism. Origen of Alexandria, in his Homilies on Numbers (Hom. XI–XII), is the foundational patristic voice here. He interprets the well at Beer as a type of the spiritual water given by Christ, and the digging with scepters as an image of the apostles and bishops who, through the staff of apostolic authority, open the wells of Sacred Scripture to the faithful. The princes who dig are the Church's pastors; the song sung to the well is the Church's liturgy over the baptismal font. Origen writes: "The well is dug by the princes and wise men of the Church, that is, by those who know how to draw forth the spiritual meaning hidden in the depths of Scripture."

Typologically, the ascent from Beer to Pisgah maps onto the soul's journey toward God — what St. Bonaventure would call the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. Each station name (gift → God's inheritance → heights) mirrors the three stages of the spiritual life: the purgative (receiving the gift of grace), the illuminative (entering God's flowing revelation), and the unitive (ascending to the heights of contemplation). Pisgah, as the summit that "looks upon the desert," corresponds to the contemplative's gaze: one who has climbed high enough to see both the desolation left behind and the promise ahead.

Sacramentally, the Catechism teaches that the Church sees in the Old Testament wells, springs, and rivers a consistent type of the life-giving water of Baptism (CCC §1217–1218). The participation of the entire community — princes and people — in the digging of the well anticipates the priestly participation of the whole Body of Christ in the Church's sacramental life (CCC §1268; cf. Lumen Gentium §10–11).

For Today

These verses invite the contemporary Catholic to recover a spirituality of intentional pilgrimage — not mere spiritual drifting, but purposeful movement from gift to ascent. The names of the stations (gift → God's inheritance → heights) offer a practical map for the interior life: begin by receiving grace humbly (Mattanah), allow it to flow and deepen through prayer and Scripture (Nahaliel), and let it draw you upward in contemplation and surrender (Bamoth).

The image of leaders digging the well with their own scepters also challenges a passive consumerism that can infect modern parish life. Authentic Catholic leadership — whether of a bishop, a parent, a religious, or a catechist — involves getting one's hands dirty in the work of drawing up living water for others. The song the people sing to the well is a reminder that liturgical thanksgiving is not an afterthought to God's gifts but an intrinsic part of receiving them rightly.

Finally, standing at Pisgah — able to see the desert behind and the promise ahead — is precisely where many Catholics find themselves: past an era of certainty, not yet arrived at the fullness of renewal. The text says: do not despair of the desert. It was the school of God. And the heights you now stand on are not the end — they are the vantage point from which the inheritance becomes visible.

Cross-References

Numbers 20:2–13 commentary — The failure at Meribah — where water was also given but through Moses's disobedience — forms a dark typological contrast with Beer's harmonious, song-filled reception of the well.
Deuteronomy 34:1–4 commentary — Moses ascends Pisgah again at the end of his life to see the Promised Land he cannot enter, giving the summit its most poignant theological freight in the canon.
John 4:10–14 commentary — Jesus's offer of 'living water' to the Samaritan woman fulfills the typology of the desert wells: the water God gives becomes a spring welling up to eternal life.
John 7:37–39 commentary — Christ's cry on the last day of the Feast — 'Let anyone who is thirsty come to me' — draws on the Exodus well tradition and is explicitly linked by John to the gift of the Spirit.
Hosea 2:14–15 commentary — God promises to lead Israel back into the desert to speak tenderly to her, transforming the wilderness (yĕšîmôn) from a place of punishment into a place of renewed covenant — illuminating the spiritual meaning of the desert Israel looks back upon from Pisgah.
Deuteronomy 8:2–3 commentary — Moses retrospectively interprets the forty years in the desert as divine pedagogy in humility and dependence, the theological framework within which the Beer–Pisgah journey should be read.