Deuteronomy 1:26

Notwithstanding, ye would not go up,.... And possess it, as the Lord had bid them, and Moses encouraged them to do, as well as Joshua and Caleb, who were two of the spies sent into it: but rebelled

And ye came near unto me every one of you, and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.

26–33. The Disaffection of the People Israel defied the command to go up (Deuteronomy 1:26), murmuring that in hate God had brought them from Egypt, to be destroyed by the Amorite (Deuteronomy 1:27). quoting the spies that the people of the land were taller with fenced cities, and the ‘Anakim were there (Deuteronomy 1:28). Moses exhorted them not to fear, Jehovah would fight for them (Deuteronomy 1:29 ff.). But they persisted in unbelief (Deuteronomy 1:32), though God had never failed to guide them (Deuteronomy 1:33).—In the parallel account which is compiled from JE and P the few J E fragments, Numbers 13:30 f., Numbers 13:33, Deuteronomy 14:1 b, Deuteronomy 14:3 f., Deuteronomy 14:8-9 b, imply the people’s disquietude at the spies’ report and state that Caleb quieted them, but the other spies contradicted, affirming that the giant ‘Anakim (J), the Nephîlim (E), were in the land. The people wept, Why doth Jehovah bring us to this land to fall by the sword? were it not better to return to Egypt under another captain? Someone (Caleb?) exhorted them not to fear, Jehovah is with us.—P, Numbers 13:32; Numbers 14:1 a, Numbers 14:2; Numbers 14:5; Numbers 14:9 a, Numbers 14:10 a, states that on the evil report of the spies, that the land was hungry and the men of great stature, the congregation murmured (a different term from that in the deuteronomic review) against Moses and Aaron. Would God we had died in the wilderness! Moses and Aaron fell prostrate, while Joshua and Caleb rent their clothes and affirmed the land to be exceeding good. But the congregation bade stone them. Thus all three accounts agree on the main facts: (1) that the spies were divided in reporting (any variations as to this are merely of emphasis), (2) that the people refused to go up from fear of the taller peoples of the land; (3) that they murmured against God (so even P, Numbers 14:27), (4) that they were exhorted to faith, and still disbelieved. The differences are—JE mentions only Caleb as urgent to go on, P Caleb and Joshua, the deuteronomic review neither, though the writer had those in mind as appears from the next section; JE reports the proposal to return to Egypt, P only a wish to die in the desert; P alone mentions the proposal of stoning.—Each writer, as elsewhere, uses his own style, our passage being full of characteristic deuteronomic phrases. But its main distinction is its religious spirit. Summarising the JE narrative, with a few verbal coincidences, it finely indicates the moral character of the people’s disaffection—opposing to their fears founded on a few men’s reports their own long and indubitable experience of their God’s unfailing providence. Deuteronomy 1:26. ye would not] A phrase found seven times in D against three in the rest of the Pent. rebelled, etc.] Web. defied the month of: another deuteronomic phrase.