EXPOSITION. ,ere. l!J-2S.-Here Moses passos from fu\, Passing by the way of the Amorites, the judges to the people at large; from as they had been commanded (vor. 7), they charging officio.ls to judge righteously, to came to K!\.desh-bnrnea. (see Numb. xii. 16). Their discontent broke out oftener tlmn reminding the people that they also had once, before they reached this place (see rccci"'ed from him commandments which Numb. xi., xii.); but Moses, in this re- they ho.d to obey. The "things" referred to capitulation, passes over these earlier in- nre either the injunctions specified in Exod. stances of their rebelliousness, and hastens xxi., etc., or simply the instructions men- to remind them of the rebellion e.t Ka.dash (Numb. xiii., xiv.), because it was this tioned in the preceding verses. God had which led to the nation being doomed to called the Israelites out of Egypt that they wander in the wilderness until the genera- should go up e.t once to Cana.an, and he had tion that cnme out of Egypt had died. It b'I' Moses done all that WllB needed for this. was through faith in God that Canaan was But they had been rebellious, and had op- to be gained and occupied by Israel; but this faith they lacked, and so they co.me posed God's commands, the consequence of short of whnt God ho.d summoned them to which was that they hnd been made to ex- nttain (Ps. lxxviii. 22; cvi. 24; Heh. iii. perience '!'arious trinls, especially to wander 18, 19; comp. 2 Chron. x..x. 20; Isa. vii. 9). nearly forty years in the wilderness, so that Hence, when they had come to the very of those who cawe out of Egypt only two borders of the promised land, and the hills of Canaan were before their eyes, and Moses were pri'l'ilcgcd to see the promised land. said to them, in the name of God, Go up, The words of l\'[oses in this section supple- possess (" e.syndetou emphaticum," Mi- ment and complete the narrative in Numb. chaelis), they hung back, and proposed that xiii.; but the words are those, not of e. com- men should be sent out to survey the land piler, but of one who had been himself a and bring a report concerning it. This was witness of all he narrates. approved of by Moses; but when the spies returned and gave their report, the people Yers.19-2G.-That great and terriblewil- were discouraged, and refused to go up. dernese : the desert forming the western They were thus rebellious age.inst the com- side of the -Stony Arabie.. It hears now the ma.ndment (literally, the mouth, the express name of Et-Tih, i.e. The Wandering, a name will) of Jehovah their God; and not only "doubtless derived from the wanderings of so, but with signal ingratitude and impiety the Israelites, the tradition of which has they murmured age.inst him, and attributed been Landed down through a period of three their deliverance out of Egypt to God's tlwusnnd years .... It is a pastoral country; hatred of them, thnt he might destroy them unfittt,d as a whole for cultivation, because (see Numb. xiii. 1-33, to which the ne.r- of its scanty soil and scarcity of water" (Dr. rntive hero corresponds). Porter, in Kitto's 'Biblical Cyclopmdie.,' Ver. 27.-Ye murmured in your tents; an vol. iii. p. 1075). In the northern part e.llnsion to what is recorded in Numb. xiv. I, especially the country is rugged and bare, etc. Moses addresses the people then with \'l"ith rnst tracts of sand, over which the him as if they had been the parties who 11corel1iug simoom often sweeps (see on so rebelled aud murmured at Ka.dosh, , er. 1). 'l'hio wilderness they had seen, though all tho.t generation, except himself, Lad known, and had experience of, and Joshua., and Caleb, had perished. This he tLeir experience had been such that the does, not merely because of the solidarity di,strict through which they had been of the -nation, but also that he might doomed to wander appeared to them _dread- 1uggest to them the possibility that the en. 1. 19-40.] Tlrn DOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 17
snmo ovil spirit might still lurk nmong mnn ben.rcth his Eon, sustainin"'0 tcn,lin,,. them nnd oonscqncntly tho need of boing supi:orting, nnr\ carrying them ~ver ,\ii!C 011 t1i'oir guo.rd o.gaiuet nllowing it to got culties (comp. Numb. xi. 12, where a Aimilo.r scope. figure occurA; see also Iao.. xlvi. 3 ,1, !xiii. 9 Vor. 28.-0ur brethren have discouraged etc.; Ps. xxiii.). ' ' ' our heart; liternlly, hai·e me/l~d or made y ers. 32, 33. - Yet in this thing ye did not lo flow down ottr heart c,oDD, Jhph. of 009, believe the Lord your God; literally, With to flow down or melt), have macle us faint• thiB thing [or With this wordl ye were not hearted. The cities are great and walled believing in Jehovah your God. The Hebrew J