Deuteronomy 1

1 ¹ These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan, in the wilderness, in the Arabah opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab.

Eleven Days That Took Forty Years

² It is eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea. ³ In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that our Father had commanded him to give to them, ⁴ after he had defeated Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth and in Edrei. ⁵ Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses began to explain this instruction, saying:

⁶ Our Father spoke to us at Horeb, saying, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain.

The Land Set Before You

⁷ Turn and set out on your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, the hill country, the lowland, the Negev, and the seacoast — the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. ⁸ See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that I swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them."

Shared Shoulders

⁹ At that time I said to you, "I am not able to carry you by myself.

Wise Men Appointed

¹⁰ Your Father has multiplied you, and today you are as numerous as the stars of heaven. ¹¹ May our Father make you a thousand times as many as you are and bless you, as he has promised you! ¹² How can I bear by myself the weight and burden of you and your strife? ¹³ Choose for your tribes wise, understanding, and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads."

¹⁴ And you answered me, "The thing that you have spoken is good for us to do." ¹⁵ So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and set them as heads over you — commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officers throughout your tribes. ¹⁶ And I charged your judges at that time, "Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the foreigner who is with him. ¹⁷ You shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be afraid of anyone, for the judgment belongs to our Father. And the case that is too hard for you, bring to me, and I will hear it." ¹⁸ And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do.

Twelve Men Into the Land

¹⁹ Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as our Father had commanded us, and we came to Kadesh-barnea.

Go Up, Do Not Fear

²⁰ And I said to you, "You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which our Father is giving us. ²¹ See, your Father has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as our Father has told you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.

²² Then all of you came near to me and said, "Let us send men ahead of us to explore the land for us and bring back word about the way by which we should go up and the cities we will come to."

²³ The plan seemed good to me, so I took twelve of your men, one from each tribe. ²⁴ They turned and went up into the hill country, and they came to the Valley of Eshcol and explored it. ²⁵ And they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us, and they brought back word and said, "It is a good land that our Father is giving us."

Israel's Refusal

²⁶ Yet you would not go up, and you rebelled against the command of your Father.

Grumbling in the Tents

²⁷ And you grumbled in your tents and said, "Because our Father hates us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. ¹ 1 v27 Here the people accuse our Father of the very opposite of his heart — the old lie that the Father does not love his children, when in truth he was carrying them the whole way. ²⁸ Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, 'The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. And besides, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.'" ² 2 v28 The Anakites were a clan of towering warriors feared throughout Canaan.

²⁹ Then I said to you, "Do not be terrified or afraid of them. ³⁰ Your Father, who goes before you, will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, ³¹ and in the wilderness, where you have seen how your Father carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.

³² Yet in spite of this word you did not believe your Father, ³³ who went before you on the way to seek out a place for you to camp, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you the way you should go.

Our Father's Grief and Oath

³⁴ And our Father heard what you said, and he was angry, and he swore,

³⁵ "Not one of these men, this evil generation, shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers, ³⁶ except Caleb the son of Jephunneh. He shall see it, and to him and to his children I will give the land on which he has set foot, because he has wholly followed our Father."

³⁷ Even with me our Father was angry on your account, and he said, "You also shall not go in there. ³⁸ Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, he shall go in there. Encourage him, for he will lead Israel to take possession of it. ³⁹ And as for your little ones, who you said would become plunder, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. To them I will give it, and they shall take possession of it. ⁴⁰ But as for you, turn and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea."

Too Late Into the Hills

⁴¹ Then you answered me, "We have sinned against our Father. We ourselves will go up and fight, just as our Father commanded us." And every one of you strapped on his weapons of war and thought it easy to go up into the hill country.

⁴² And our Father said to me, "Say to them, 'Do not go up and do not fight, for I am not in your midst, lest you be struck down before your enemies.'"

⁴³ So I spoke to you, but you would not listen. You rebelled against the command of our Father, and you acted presumptuously and went up into the hill country. ⁴⁴ Then the Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do. They beat you down in Seir as far as Hormah. ⁴⁵ And you returned and wept before our Father, but our Father did not listen to your voice or pay you any attention. ⁴⁶ So you stayed at Kadesh many days, the many days that you remained there.