Deuteronomy 1:20-21

1:20 Then I said to you, “You have come to the Amorite hill country which the Lord our God is about to give ¹  us. 1:21 Look, he ²  has placed the land in front of you! ³  Go up, take possession of it, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, said to do. Do not be afraid or discouraged!”

Deuteronomy 1:39

1:39 Also, your infants, who you thought would die on the way, ⁴  and your children, who as yet do not know good from bad, ⁵  will go there; I will give them the land and they will possess it.

¹ tn The Hebrew participle has an imminent future sense here, although many English versions treat it as a present tense (“is giving us,” NAB, NIV, NRSV) or a predictive future (“will give us,” NCV).

² tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun (“he”) has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid repetition.

³ tn Or “has given you the land” (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV).

⁴ tn Heb “would be a prey.”

⁵ sn Do not know good from bad. This is a figure of speech called a merism (suggesting a whole by referring to its extreme opposites). Other examples are the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:9), the boy who knows enough “to reject the wrong and choose the right” (Isa 7:16; 8:4), and those who “cannot tell their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11). A young child is characterized by lack of knowledge.