Deuteronomy opens with Moses looking back. The nation is camped on the plains of Moab, one river from the land, and he spends three chapters retelling the last forty years — the command at Horeb to go up, the refusal at Kadesh, the wasted decades, and the first territory finally won. Woven through the rebuke is a picture of God the whole way: a father carrying a child.
A study in Deuteronomy 1-3 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
Go Up And Possess It; Fear Not
“Behold, the LORD thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and possess it, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 1:21
Moses makes the new generation hear the exact words spoken to their parents at Kadesh: the land was already set before them, the fear was groundless, the command was simply go. And then, “ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 1:26). The forty years that followed were not a detour God chose; they were the long way round that unbelief made necessary.
As A Man Doth Bear His Son
“And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.”
Deuteronomy 1:31
Right in the middle of the rebuke, the tenderness. Every mile of the wandering — even the miles that were punishment — God carried them the way a father carries a tired child who cannot walk any further. Isaiah says the same of the whole history: “in all their affliction he was afflicted… he bare them, and carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah 63:9). Discipline and carrying are not opposites in God’s hands.
Thou Hast Lacked Nothing
“For the LORD thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.”
Deuteronomy 2:7
Forty years that should not have happened, and still: bread every morning, water from rock, clothes that did not wear out, a pillar overhead. The generation was under sentence, and the provision never once failed. God’s faithfulness to His people is not switched off by their failures; it outlasts them.
Let It Suffice Thee
“But the LORD was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the LORD said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter. Get thee up into the top of Pisgah… and behold it with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.”
Deuteronomy 3:26-27
Moses asks three times to be let over the river (the price of Meribah). God’s answer is a firm no with a kindness folded inside it: you will not cross, but climb the mountain and I will show you all of it. Some prayers God answers by giving us the view instead of the entry — and the view, it turns out, is not a consolation prize. The rest of the book is what Moses says on the way to that mountain.
“Yet he did not regret the burdens he had borne. He knew that his mission and work were of God’s own appointing.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 472
