Deuteronomy 1:46

So ye abode in Kadesh many days,.... Yea, some years, as some think: according to the days that ye abode there; that is, according to Jarchi, as they did in the rest of the journeys or stations; so

So ye abode in Kadesh many days, according unto the days that ye abode there. So ye abode in Kadesh many days.

i.e. As you abode in Kadesh many, even forty days, until the spies which you sent returned to give you an account; so you also abode there many days, or a long time after, and were not now permitted to make any further progress towards Canaan.

Deuteronomy 1:46 So ye abode in Kadesh many days, according unto the days that ye abode [there].Ver. 46. So ye abode in Kadesh many days.] Many indeed; yea, many years. And here it was, or hereabouts, that they received those laws which are recorded, as also that they stoned him that gathered sticks on the Sabbath day; that Korah and his accomplices perished; that fourteen thousand seven hundred died of the plague; that Aaron’ s rod flourished; that Moses, seeing the people fall so fast in the wilderness, wrote Psalms 90:1-17, - where he telleth us that the ordinary term of man’ s life was reduced to seventy or eighty years, and so made shorter by half than before. All which things are thought to have happened in the last six months of the second year after their coming out of Egypt: the history of those two years only, and of the last of the forty are set forth by Moses: the intercurrent thirty seven years with their events, save only the bare names of their various stations, being passed over in silence. If men will take liberty to commit sin against God, he will make but a short story of them and their works: Lot, for instance.

(46) So ye abode in Kadesh many days.—Better, and. In Numbers 14:25 the command was, “Tomorrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness.” This command was broken by the attack on the Canaanites, made on the morrow after the command. We cannot be certain that the many days spent in Kadesh were spent after the defeat. It may be merely a note of the fact that the time spent in Kadesh was considerable. The mission of the spies alone occupied forty days. According unto the days that ye abode there.—The Jewish commentator Rashi, quoting from Sêder Olâm, says they in Kadesh, and nineteen in their wanderings.

Verse 46. According unto the days that ye abode there.] They had been a long time at this place, see Numbers 13:27; Numbers 20:1; Numbers 20:14; Numbers 20:21. And some think that the words mean, "Ye abode as long at Kadesh, when you came to it the second time, as ye did at the first." Or, according to others, "While ye were in that part of the desert, ye encamped at Kadesh." 1. As one grand object of the law of God was to instruct the people in those things which were calculated to promote their peace and insure their prosperity; and as they were apt to lose sight of their spiritual interests, without a due attention to which their secular interest could not be promoted; Moses, not only in this chapter, but through the whole book, calls upon them to recollect their former miserable situation, in which they held neither life nor property but at the will of a merciless tyrant, and the great kindness and power of God manifested in their deliverance from a bondage that was as degrading as it was oppressive. These things properly remembered would lead them to prize their blessings, and duly appreciate the mercy of their Maker. 2. But it was not only this general display of God's kindness, in the grand act of their deliverance from Egypt, that he wished them to keep constantly in view, but also that gracious providence which was manifested in every step they took; which directed all their movements, provided for all their wants, continually showing what they should do, how they should do it, and also the most proper time and place for every act, whether religious or civil. By bringing before them in one point of view the history of almost forty years, in which the strangest and most stupendous occurrences had taken place that had ever been exhibited to the world, he took the readiest way to impress their minds, not only with their deep obligation to God, but also to show them that they were a people on whom their Maker had set his heart to do them good, and that if they feared him they should lack nothing that was good. He lays out also before them a history of their miscarriages and rebellion, and the privations and evils they had suffered in consequence, that this might act as a continual warning, and thus become, in the hands of God, a preventive of crimes. 3. If every Christian were thus to call his past life into review, he would see equal proofs of God's gracious regards to his body and soul; equal proofs of eternal mercy in providing for his deliverance from the galling yoke and oppressive tyranny of sin, as the Israelites had in their deliverance from Egypt; and equal displays of a most gracious providence, that had also been his incessant companion through all the changes and chances of this mortal life, guiding him by its counsel, that he might be at last received into glory.

46. So ye abode in Ḳ ?adesh] So JE, Numbers 20:1 b, but apparently of a later residence than this. many days, according unto the days that ye abode there] ‘An example of the “idem per idem” idiom often employed in the Semitic languages, when a writer is either unable or has no occasion to speak explicitly’ (Driver). Cp. Deuteronomy 9:25, Deuteronomy 29:16 [15]; 1 Samuel 23:13, etc. If this verse be from the writer of the rest of this discourse the time implied cannot, in the light of his further statements in Deuteronomy 2:1; Deuteronomy 2:14, amount to years; for the 2nd of the 40 years was already either wholly or nearly exhausted and these verses state that all the next 38 were spent between Ḳ ?adesh and the Moabite frontier. But as we shall see in the introd. to the next section JE attributes to the people a very long residence in Ḳ ?adesh, in fact the bulk of the 38 years. Probably, therefore, the indefinite statement of this verse is not from the writer of the rest of this discourse, but from an editor aware of the divergent traditions; in further evidence of which observe that he uses the simple Ḳ ?adesh instead of the Ḳ ?adesh-barnea‘ employed in the rest of the discourse.

46. Abode in Kadesh many days — This verse has been variously interpreted.