Referring to Numbers 20, Tim Keller muses,
God was ready to be gracious, but Moses was in no mood for that. The relentless criticism had made him self-righteous. He held them in contempt. He had wrath but no compassion, and that is the mark of a man who is becoming less like God, not more. (See Isaiah 15-16 where God grieves even as he speaks in judgment.) Moses is a man who has forgotten grace, and the sign of it is a sanctimonious spirit along with words of denunciation without humility and compassion.
