Deuteronomy Chapter 1:20-46

Deuteronomy 1:20–46 NIV

20 Then I said to you, “You have reached the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving us. 21 See, the Lord your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” 22 Then all of you came to me and said, “Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and bring back a report about the route we are to take and the towns we will come to.” 23 The idea seemed good to me; so I selected twelve of you, one man from each tribe. 24 They left and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshkol and explored it. 25 Taking with them some of the fruit of the land, they brought it down to us and reported, “It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.” 26 But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. 27 You grumbled in your tents and said, “The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. 28 Where can we go? Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’ ” 29 Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. 30 The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, 31 and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” 32 In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God, 33 who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go. 34 When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore: 35 “No one from this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your ancestors, 36 except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed the Lord wholeheartedly.” 37 Because of you the Lord became angry with me also and said, “You shall not enter it, either. 38 But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to inherit it. 39 And the little ones that you said would be taken captive, your children who do not yet know good from bad—they will enter the land. I will give it to them and they will take possession of it. 40 But as for you, turn around and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea.” 41 Then you replied, “We have sinned against the Lord. We will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us.” So every one of you put on his weapons, thinking it easy to go up into the hill country. 42 But the Lord said to me, “Tell them, ‘Do not go up and fight, because I will not be with you. You will be defeated by your enemies.’ ” 43 So I told you, but you would not listen. You rebelled against the Lord’s command and in your arrogance you marched up into the hill country. 44 The Amorites who lived in those hills came out against you; they chased you like a swarm of bees and beat you down from Seir all the way to Hormah. 45 You came back and wept before the Lord, but he paid no attention to your weeping and turned a deaf ear to you. 46 And so you stayed in Kadesh many days—all the time you spent there.

Rebellion and its consequences

This part of the chapter is the sorriest of all that is in the book of Deuteronomy. It is about rebellion and its consequences. Some decisions that we make have little in the way of consequences and others have a devastating effect that nothing can repair it. And today’s is the latter.

There is a breakdown of four parts in this passage:

20-25 The background of the rebellion

26-33 The description of the rebellion

34-40 The Lord’s reaction to the rebellion

41-46 The outcome of the rebellion

20-25 The background

20-21 Let’s go!

Moses says get your act together. Don’t be afraid or worry about the upcoming challenge. Take the land. It’s yours for the taking. Let’ go!

22-25 Hmm, spy first!

Wait, they said, let’s do a bit of surveillance first and send some of our guys in just to get a lay of the land. The thing is that this faithless. They are saying we are not sure about the Lord’s strategy so let’s make our own. But it is the Lord who is commander in chief.

23-24 OK!

But Moses says: OK. Seems reasonable. And so Moses arranges for one from each tribe to go with the Lord’s blessing. Notice that this blessing in is retrospect.

In Numbers 12-13 we have the full story. In effect what was said was:

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy Permission for the Mission

One, the people come to Moses and say, “You know, we can’t go in too quickly. We’ve got to strategize. Let’s send out scouts.” They come and tell Moses that’s what we should do. I imagine what happens is that Moses takes the thing to the Lord and the Lord says, “Fine, it’s good. It’s okay. Send them out. We will listen to them.” This happens several times in the book where the Lord grants people’s requests

24-25

Well they came back with a great report about the land. They affirmed everything that had been said by the Lord about it. It IS the land the Lord is giving us; the Promised Land. Yay!

This, though, is not the whole story for ten of the spies then went on to say that they cannot go up for the people were giants, they had fortified cities and so on. They discouraged the people. Maybe they were exaggerating the extent of their enemies but they forgot the Lord who had helped them defeat two kings just a short while ago.

26-33 The description of the rebellion

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Results of the Mission

the people’s response to the mission. And it is one of rebellion

26

Yet you would not go up even with such glowing reports. You rebelled against God. They refused to do what He told them despite the land being a gift.

27

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The People’s Speech

You see how twisted their thinking has become. All of a sudden, God’s wonderful plan of salvation, redemption from the slavery of Egypt, has turned into a diabolical plot. God got them out of Egypt to destroy them. Their complaint is against God.

28

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The People’s Speech

Yes, the land is good, but no, the people are too strong.

29-31

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy Moses’ Pastoral Response

The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have been, you’ve seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place’ ”—the Lord won’t stop carrying you now; this is His battle; He will fight for you.

Why would the Lord be any different now? Moses is having a hard time convincing them. Paranoia has swept over the camp. Do not fear the enemy but trust God.

32-33

They simply would not believe. Yet God had showed Him He was with them. He was there:

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The People’s Attitude Remains Rebellious

in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go.” They had experienced the presence, the delivering presence and the providing presence, of God for a long time, but they couldn’t trust Him now

34-40 The Lord’s reaction to the rebellion

34

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Anger of the Lord

It’s not surprising that the Lord is angry

And He swore. Not like that! He made a solemn promise:

35

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Anger of the Lord

‘Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers.’ ” Fine, if you don’t want to go in, then you won’t go in, and not one of you will, except …

36

some

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy Two Notable Exceptions

very notable exceptions

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy Two Notable Exceptions

Caleb is probably not even a native Israelite; he is a Kenizzite. But here is a guy who is so thoroughly integrated into the faith of Israel that when the Lord was picking scouts to represent the tribes to scout out the land, Caleb represented the tribe of Judah. Elsewhere Caleb is called “my servant Caleb who has a different spirit.” In this instance as well, there is another strange expression used of him: “he was full after God,”

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy Two Notable Exceptions

Here is a convert to the faith of the Lord; he is the one who will enter the land

37

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Bitterness of Moses

“Even with me the LORD was angry on your account, and he said to me, ‘You shall not enter there.’

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Bitterness of Moses

an early signal of a deep-seated bitterness in Moses

He had been angry with the people and lashed out at them and in the process he himself disobeyed God.

38

And Joshua becomes the one who will lead them in. For both Caleb and Joshua said they should go in but, unfortunately for them, they suffered because of others.

39

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Lord’s Promise

The people had said to Moses and to the Lord, “They will make mincemeat out of our children. We can’t take them into that dangerous world.” Ironically, the Lord says, “Fine, you are the ones who will die. Your children will go in, and they will take the land.”

40

Now Turn around.

What is interesting about this chapter is what Moses does not say. He is recounting the history of Israel yet if we read Numbers 14 we find that Moses, despite his frustration at the people was interceding there for them.

Moses tries to change the Lord’s mind about destroying the Israelites. Here were his four arguments:

the Lord had invested great effort in saving the Israelites from bondage of Egypt. Effort will be wasted if He killed them. (13)

the Lord has been uniquely close to His people. He is in their midst. He has been personally leading them along the way; by implication, it makes no sense now to destroy them (14).

the Lord’s reputation among the nations will be damaged if He destroys Israel. The people around will think that He slaughtered them in the desert because He was unable to carry through on His promise to give them the good land. (15-16)

the Lord’s gracious character is in question: “You have proved yourself merciful in the past. Please be gracious again and forgive this people.” (17-19)

41-46 The outcome of the rebellion

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The People’s Response to God’s Punishment

“So I spoke to you, and you would not listen; but you rebelled against the command of the LORD and presumptuously went up into the hill country.”

The desperation that these people had once they realised there was no changing God’s mind. They had rebelled and the outcome was they missed their chance.

Deuteronomy (King James Version) A. The Pilgrimage of the First Generation of Israelite Believers: A Picture of Great Hope and Great Failure, 1:6–2:15

the sins of fear, unbelief, grumbling, and rebellion

kept them out of the Promised land. And their lack of repentance was clear in their continual disobedience. They were only sorry that they could no longer enter the Promised Land not sorry they had sinned against God. They were routed by their enemies and chased for about 50 miles. Scary!

Lessons

God offers us gifts. Sometimes it seems impossible. But trust God, receive in faith. If the Israelites had then they would have got into the land a whole 38 years sooner for greater is He who is in you than he that is in the world.

Caleb was originally an outsider but he became part of the people of God. A stranger with faith. And his and Joshua’s heart, a native of Israel, were fully after God and in the end they were rewarded.

When God says ‘Go’ go. But in this case they disobeyed. Then He said ‘don’t go’ but they went! In both cases it was disobedience. This was a mistake that could not be rectified.

The hardest lesson of all is that the wages of sin is death. They refused the gift of God. Disobedience led to their deaths. The only reason why God sent them back into the desert was to kill them all. It had been the last straw.

Moses had been offered to be the new ancestor of Israel for God wanted to wipe them out straight away but he prayed on their behalf so at least their descendants would remain the progeny. But those over the aged 20+ will die as a result of the rebellion.