Israel’s History after the Exodus

These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab.

It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.

In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the sons of Israel, in accordance with everything that the Lord had commanded him to declare to them,

after he had defeated Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth and in Edrei.

Across the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses began to explain this Law, saying,

“The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain.

Turn and set out on your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country, in the lowland, in the Negev, by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.

See, I have placed the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and their descendants after them.’

“And I spoke to you at that time, saying, ‘I am not able to endure you alone.

The Lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are this day like the stars of heaven in number.

How can I alone endure the burden and weight of you and your strife?

And you answered me and said, ‘The thing which you have said to do is good.’

So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and informed men, and appointed them as heads over you, commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and officers for your tribes.

“Then I ordered your judges at that time, saying, ‘Hear the cases between your fellow countrymen and judge righteously between a person and his fellow countryman, or the stranger who is with him.

You are not to show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike. You are not to be afraid of any person, for the judgment is God’s. The case that is too difficult for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.’

“Then we set out from Horeb, and went through all that great and terrible wilderness that you saw on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, just as the Lord our God had commanded us; and we came to Kadesh-barnea.

And I said to you, ‘You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is about to give us.

See, the Lord your God has placed the land before you; go up, take possession, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you. Do not fear or be dismayed.’

“Then all of you approached me and said, ‘Let us send men ahead of us, so that they may spy out the land for us, and bring back to us word of the way by which we should go up, and the cities which we should enter.’

Then they turned and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshcol, and spied it out.

And they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us. They also brought us back a report and said, ‘The land that the Lord our God is about to give us is good.’

and you grumbled in your tents and said, ‘Because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to destroy us.

Where can we go up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, by saying, “The people are bigger and taller than we; the cities are large and fortified up to heaven. And besides, we saw the sons of the Anakim there.”’

But I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified, nor fear them.

and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, on all of the road which you have walked until you came to this place.’