Deuteronomy 1:37

Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes,.... Not at the same time, though, as some think, at the same place, near thirty eight years afterwards, they provoking him to speak unadvisedly with

Also the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither. Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes.

For your sakes; upon occasion of your wickedness and perverseness, by which you provoked me to speak unadvisedly, ,33.

Deuteronomy 1:37 Also the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither.Ver. 37. The Lord was angry with me.] The saint’ s afflictions proceed oft from love displeased, from love offended. "Fury is not in God."

(37) Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes.—Here, again, Moses combines his own rejection. an event of the fortieth year of the exodus, with the rejection of the people in the second year. The reason was the same—unbelief. “Because ye believed me not” was the reason given to Moses in Numbers 20:12. “Ye did not believe the Lord your God” is the reason for the rejection of the people, given above in Deuteronomy 1:32. As the spies presumed to investigate the route and order of the conquest, a matter of Divine guidance, so Moses presumed to alter the prescribed order for the miracle in Kadesh. Like transgressions incurred like penalties. The fault for which the people had suffered could not be overlooked in the leader. (See also Notes on Deuteronomy 3:23-28; Deuteronomy 32:49.) This and Deuteronomy 1:38 should be taken as a parenthesis.

Verse 37. The Lord was angry with me] See on Clarke "Numbers 20:12", &c., where a particular account is given of the sin of Moses.

37. Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes] The Heb. order is more emphatic, also with me was Jehovah angry—hith’annaph, peculiar in the Pent. to D, and to its passages in the Pl. address, here, Deuteronomy 4:21, Deuteronomy 9:8; Deuteronomy 9:20—for your sakes, bigelalekem. So in different terms Deuteronomy 3:26, was angry, yith‘abber, for your sakes, lema‘anekem; and Deuteronomy 4:21, hith’annaph and ’al dibrêkem. Thou also shalt not go in thither] Heb. even thou or for thy part thou, etc. Further Note to Deuteronomy 1:36-38. Because Moses has just been described as seeking to turn the people from their sin, Deuteronomy 1:29 ff., and it is therefore unreasonable to include him in their punishment; because Deuteronomy 1:37-38 needlessly anticipate Deuteronomy 3:26; Deuteronomy 3:28 and Deuteronomy 4:21; and because Deuteronomy 1:39 in whole or part follows suitably on Deuteronomy 1:36; therefore Deuteronomy 1:37-38 are taken by many (Dillm., W. R. Smith, Steuern., Berth, etc.) as a later addition to the text. And indeed the beginning of Deu 1:39 shows that the original has been disturbed by an editorial hand (see below). Steuern. would also omit Deuteronomy 1:36 on the ground that Kaleb has not been previously mentioned in this survey. But Kaleb is mentioned in JE on which this survey otherwise depends. In whatever way these textual questions may be decided, the parallel passages Deuteronomy 3:26 ff. and Deuteronomy 4:21 confirm the fact of a D tradition or statement that Jehovah was angry with Moses for the people’s sake. This can only mean, their guilt was great enough to include the very leader who had done his best to dissuade them from their disaffection! Now neither JE nor P gives any hint of so remarkable a judgement. On the contrary, P accounts for the exclusion of Moses by his own sin in striking the rock at Ḳ ?adesh 37 years after this disaffection of Israel, Numbers 21:10 ff; Numbers 27:13 f.; Deuteronomy 32:50 f. The most reasonable explanation of such discrepancies is that they are discrepancies not of fact but or opinion. The earliest tradition, JE, merely held the facts that Kaleb survived and that Moses died on the eve of the possession of the Promised Land. The problem, which arose from this contrast of fortune, the deuteronomic writers solved by the statement that Moses was included in the guilt of the people when, startled by the report of the spies, they refused to invade Canaan from the S. in the second year of the wandering; and this agrees with the deuteronomic principle of the ethical solidarity of Israel. But the later priestly writer or writers, under the influence of the idea, first emphasized in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jeremiah 31:29 f., Ezekiel 18), that every man died because of his own sin, found a solution for the problem in Moses’ own guilt in presumptuously striking the rock at Ḳ ?adesh, 37 years later.

The sentence on Moses was not passed when the people rebelled during their first encampment at Kadesh, but some 37 years later, when they had re-assembled in the same neighborhood at Meribah (see the Numbers 20:13 note).

37. Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes — The occasion here referred to was during the second stay at Kadesh.