Deuteronomy 1:34-39

Judgment at Kadesh Barnea

1:34 When the Lord heard you, he became angry and made this vow: ¹  1:35 “Not a single person ²  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; ³  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.” ⁴  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, ⁵  will go. Encourage him, because he will enable Israel to inherit the land. ⁶  1:39 Also, your infants, who you thought would die on the way, ⁷  and your children, who as yet do not know good from bad, ⁸  will go there; I will give them the land and they will possess it.

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

[1:35]  ² tn Heb “Not a man among these men.”

[1:36]  ³ 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]  ⁴ 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]  ⁴ tn Heb “the one who stands before you”; NAB “your aide”; TEV “your helper.”

[1:38]  ⁵ tn Heb “it”; the referent (the land) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:39]  ⁵ tn Heb “would be a prey.”

[1:39]  ⁶ 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.