Deuteronomy1chapter 1

Deuteronomy 1:1-2

The book opens as speech rather than narrative, and the Hebrew title takes its name from the opening line, Devarim, the words. Verse 2 sits in a parenthesis and carries the argument of the whole chapter: eleven days lie between Horeb and Kadesh-barnea by the way of mount Seir. Verse 3 will place the speaking in the fortieth year, so ground that could be covered in eleven days took a generation, and 2:14 counts thirty and eight of those years from Kadesh to the brook Zered.

Deuteronomy 1:3-5

The dating is exact: the fortieth year, the eleventh month, the first day of the month. Sihon and Og have already fallen at Numbers 21:21-35, so the speech comes from a man who has just taken two kingdoms east of the river and has been told he will not cross it. Albert Barnes reads the verb in verse 5 rendered declare as explaining a law already given rather than issuing a new one, and the Greek name Deuteronomy comes from the Septuagint rendering of a copy of this law at 17:18.

Deuteronomy 1:6-8

The first words quoted from God in this book are an order to leave, ye have dwelt long enough in this mount. Clarke reckons the stay at Horeb at close to a year, from the arrival at Exodus 19:1 to the departure at Numbers 10:11. The borders named in verse 7 reach the Euphrates, which is the grant made to Abram at Genesis 15:18, and verse 8 speaks as though the matter were closed, I have set the land before you, resting it on an oath sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob rather than on anything the hearers have done.

Deuteronomy 1:9-11

Exodus 18 credits the plan for shared judging to Jethro, who watched Moses sit alone from morning to evening and told him the thing was too heavy. Here Moses tells it as his own proposal to the people and does not mention his father in law at all. Both accounts stand in the canon, and the difference fits what this chapter is doing, which is holding the people to what they themselves agreed to. The reason he gives for the change is the multitude, as the stars of heaven, which is the promise made to Abram at Genesis 15:5.

Deuteronomy 1:12-15

The people choose and Moses appoints, which is the order set out in verse 13, take you wise men and I will make them rulers over you. Exodus 18:21 has Moses doing the choosing, and it asks for men who fear God and hate covetousness where verse 13 asks for men wise, understanding and known among their tribes. The grades are identical in both places, thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens. Barnes separates these officers from the seventy elders of Numbers 11:16, who were a smaller and later body.

Deuteronomy 1:16-18

The charge has four parts: hear the causes, judge righteously, cover the stranger as well as the brother, and hear the small as well as the great. The ground given is that the judgment is God's, so the bench is held on loan, and Jehoshaphat repeats the same reasoning to his own judges at 2 Chronicles 19:6. Clarke notes that the Hebrew behind respect persons is literally to know faces, so both halves of verse 17 turn on the same figure, the face of the great man and the face of the poor one.

Deuteronomy 1:19-21

What lay between Horeb and Kadesh-barnea is called that great and terrible wilderness, a phrase the book uses again at 8:15 where the serpents and scorpions and the thirsty ground are named. Fear not, neither be discouraged in verse 21 is the first appearance of a formula that runs to 31:6 and 31:8 and is handed on to Joshua at Joshua 1:9. It is spoken here to a generation that will not act on it, and Moses says it a second time at verse 29 after they have refused.

Deuteronomy 1:22-23

Numbers 13:1-2 has the LORD telling Moses to send the men. Verse 22 here has the people coming to Moses and asking for them. Both accounts stand in the canon, and Barnes reads the plan as one that began with the people, was approved by Moses, and was then put to God and sanctioned, while other readers take the two passages as two moments inside one exchange. Moses adds that the saying pleased him well, which is a man telling the story against himself.

Deuteronomy 1:24-25

The report the spies bring back in verse 25 is good and contains nothing else, it is a good land which the LORD our God doth give us. Numbers 13:27-28 gives the same report with a nevertheless attached to it, the people be strong and the cities walled and great. Moses leaves the nevertheless out of the spies' mouths here and puts it into the people's own at verse 28, so the discouragement in this telling belongs to the hearers.

Deuteronomy 1:26-28

Because the LORD hated us in verse 27 is the exact inversion of what 7:8 will say, because the LORD loved you, and the two verses repay being read together. Cities walled up to heaven is a figure this book uses again at 9:1, and the sons of the Anakims are the giants of Numbers 13:33, described at 2:10-11 and 3:11 and left as a remnant in Gath at Joshua 11:21-22. Verse 26 calls the refusal rebellion against the commandment of the LORD, and verse 43 will lay the same charge on the opposite mistake.

Deuteronomy 1:29-31

The answer Moses gave was that God fights, and the evidence offered was Egypt, which they had watched with their own eyes. Verse 31 then changes the figure, the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, which is a father carrying a tired child rather than a captain leading troops. Acts 13:18 looks back on the same forty years, and a body of Greek manuscripts there reads a verb meaning to carry as a nurse carries a child, which is what the Septuagint has at this verse, while other manuscripts read the verb behind the King James rendering that he suffered their manners.

Deuteronomy 1:32-33

The verdict on the whole episode is one charge, that they did not believe the LORD their God. Verse 33 names what they declined to trust, the one who went before them in fire by night and in a cloud by day and who had been finding the ground for their tents the entire way. They had asked at verse 22 for men to search out the land, and verse 33 says God had been doing that work ahead of them already. Hebrews 3:19 gives the same account of why that generation stayed out, that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Deuteronomy 1:34-36

The sentence is sworn rather than merely spoken, and it falls on this evil generation, the adults numbered at Numbers 14:29. Numbers 14:30 excepts Caleb and Joshua together by name. Verse 36 excepts Caleb alone and brings Joshua in at verse 38 in a different office, so the two passages divide the same material differently and both stand. The land that he hath trodden upon is the promise Caleb claims for himself at eighty-five years old in Joshua 14:9-12, and the reason given here is that he wholly followed the LORD.

Deuteronomy 1:37-38

Moses gives the reason he cannot enter three times in this book, here and at 3:26 and 4:21, and all three say the LORD was angry with him for your sakes. Numbers 20:12 gives the reason as unbelief at the waters of Meribah, which the narrative places in the fortieth year rather than at Kadesh in the second. Both accounts stand in the canon, and readers account for the placing differently, some taking verse 37 as Moses gathering his own exclusion into the story of the people's, others as a later occasion mentioned out of its order. The one instruction attached is about Joshua, and it is laid on Israel rather than on Joshua, encourage him.

Deuteronomy 1:39-40

The children the parents said would be taken as spoil, at Numbers 14:3, are the ones handed the land at Numbers 14:31 and here. Which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil marks an age beneath responsibility, and Isaiah 7:15-16 uses the same measure of a child; where that line falls has been argued over for centuries and this text does not set it. The direction then reverses in verse 40, back into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea, away from a border they were standing on.

Deuteronomy 1:41-43

We have sinned against the LORD, we will go up and fight is repentance arriving after the sentence and taking the form of doing the very thing that had been refused the day before. Numbers 14:40-45 tells the same attempt and adds that the ark of the covenant and Moses stayed behind in the camp. Verse 42 gives the reason it fails in one clause, for I am not among you, and verse 43 lays on this advance the identical charge verse 26 laid on the retreat, that they rebelled against the commandment of the LORD.

Deuteronomy 1:44-46

Verse 44 names the Amorites as the ones who chased them as bees do; Numbers 14:45 names the Amalekites and the Canaanites. Both accounts stand and the difference is left standing with them. Hormah carries the sense of a thing devoted to destruction, and Numbers 21:1-3 has Israel later fastening that name on a place they destroy in their turn. Verse 45 says the LORD would not hearken to their weeping, and verse 46 covers the years that follow in half a sentence, ye abode in Kadesh many days, which 2:14 counts as thirty and eight.