Deuteronomy 1:26-40

Disobedience at Kadesh Barnea

1:26 You were not willing to go up, however, but instead rebelled against the Lord your God. ¹  1:27 You complained among yourselves privately ²  and said, “Because the Lord hates us he brought us from Egypt to deliver us over to the Amorites so they could destroy us! 1:28 What is going to happen to us? Our brothers have drained away our courage ³  by describing people who are more numerous ⁴  and taller than we are, and great cities whose defenses appear to be as high as heaven ⁵  itself! Moreover, they said they saw ⁶  Anakites ⁷  there.” 1:29 So I responded to you, “Do not be terrified ⁸  of them! 1:30 The Lord your God is about to go ⁹  ahead of you; he will fight for you, just as you saw him do in Egypt ¹⁰  1:31 and in the desert, where you saw him ¹¹  carrying you along like a man carries his son. This he did everywhere you went until you came to this very place.” 1:32 However, through all this you did not have confidence in the Lord your God, 1:33 the one who was constantly going before you to find places for you to set up camp. He appeared by fire at night and cloud by day, to show you the way you ought to go.

Judgment at Kadesh Barnea

1:34 When the Lord heard you, he became angry and made this vow: ¹²  1:35 “Not a single person ¹³  of this evil generation will see the good land that I promised to give to your ancestors! 1:36 The exception is Caleb son of Jephunneh; ¹⁴  he will see it and I will give him and his descendants the territory on which he has walked, because he has wholeheartedly followed me.” ¹⁵  1:37 As for me, the Lord was also angry with me on your account. He said, “You also will not be able to go there. 1:38 However, Joshua son of Nun, your assistant, ¹⁶  will go. Encourage him, because he will enable Israel to inherit the land. ¹⁷  1:39 Also, your infants, who you thought would die on the way, ¹⁸  and your children, who as yet do not know good from bad, ¹⁹  will go there; I will give them the land and they will possess it. 1:40 But as for you, ²⁰  turn back and head for the desert by the way to the Red Sea.” ²¹ 

[1:26]  ¹ tn Heb “the mouth of the Lord your God.” To include “the mouth” would make for odd English style. The mouth stands by metonymy for the Lord’s command, which in turn represents the Lord himself.

[1:27]  ² tn Heb “in your tents,” that is, privately.

[1:28]  ³ tn Heb “have caused our hearts to melt.”

[1:28]  ⁴ tn Heb “greater.” Many English versions understand this to refer to physical size or strength rather than numbers (cf. “stronger,” NAB, NIV, NRSV; “bigger,” NASB).

[1:28]  ⁵ tn Or “as the sky.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[1:28]  ⁶ tn Heb “we have seen.”

[1:28]  ⁷ tn Heb “the sons of the Anakim.”

[1:29]  ⁸ tn Heb “do not tremble and do not be afraid.” Two synonymous commands are combined for emphasis.

[1:30]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew participle indicates imminent future action here, though some English versions treat it as a predictive future (“will go ahead of you,” NCV; cf. also TEV, CEV).

[1:30]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “according to all which he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.”

[1:31]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun (“him”) has been employed in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[1:34]  ¹² tn Heb “and swore,” i.e., made an oath or vow.

[1:35]  ¹³ tn Heb “Not a man among these men.”

[1:36]  ¹⁴ sn Caleb had, with Joshua, brought back to Israel a minority report from Canaan urging a conquest of the land, for he was confident of the Lord’s power (Num 13:6, 8, 16, 30; 14:30, 38).

[1:36]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the Lord.” The pronoun (“me”) has been employed in the translation, since it sounds strange to an English reader for the Lord to speak about himself in third person.

[1:38]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the one who stands before you”; NAB “your aide”; TEV “your helper.”

[1:38]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “it”; the referent (the land) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:39]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “would be a prey.”

[1:39]  ¹⁹ 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.

[1:40]  ²⁰ tn The Hebrew pronoun is plural, as are the following verbs, indicating that Moses and the people are addressed (note v. 41).

[1:40]  ²¹ tn Heb “the Reed Sea.” “Reed” is a better translation of the Hebrew סוּף (suf), traditionally rendered “red.” The name “Red Sea” is based on the LXX which referred to it as ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης (eruqra" qalassh", “red sea”). Nevertheless, because the body of water in question is known in modern times as the Red Sea, this term was used in the translation. The part of the Red Sea in view here is not the one crossed in the exodus but its eastern arm, now known as the Gulf of Eilat or Gulf of Aqaba.