Deuteronomy 1:26

Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

1:19-46 Moses reminds the Israelites of their march from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea, through that great and terrible wilderness. He shows how near they were to a happy settlement in Canaan. It will aggravate the eternal ruin of hypocrites, that they were not far from the kingdom of God. As if it were not enough that they were sure of their God before them, they would send men before them. Never any looked into the Holy Land, but they must own it to be a good land. And was there any cause to distrust this God? An unbelieving heart was at the bottom of all this. All disobedience to God's laws, and distrust of his power and goodness, flow from disbelief of his word, as all true obedience springs from faith. It is profitable for us to divide our past lives into distinct periods; to give thanks to God for the mercies we have received in each, to confess and seek the forgiveness of all the sins we can remember; and thus to renew our acceptance of God's salvation, and our surrender of ourselves to his service. Our own plans seldom avail to good purpose; while courage in the exercise of faith, and in the path of duty, enables the believer to follow the Lord fully, to disregard all that opposes, to triumph over all opposition, and to take firm hold upon the promised blessings.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The plan of sending the spies originated with the people; and, as in itself a reasonable one, it approved itself to Moses; it was submitted to God, sanctioned by Him, and carried out under special divine direction. The orator's purpose in this chapter is to bring before the people emphatically their own responsibilites and behavior. It is therefore important to remind them, that the sending of the spies, which led immediately to their complaining and rebellion, was their own suggestion.

The following verses to the end of the chapter give a condensed account, the fuller one being in Numbers 13-14, of the occurrences which led to the banishment of the people for 40 years into the wilderness.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

22-33. ye came … and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land—The proposal to despatch spies emanated from the people through unbelief; but Moses, believing them sincere, gave his cordial assent to this measure, and God on being consulted permitted them to follow the suggestion (see on [111]Nu 13:1). The issue proved disastrous to them, only through their own sin and folly.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Notwithstanding, ye would not go up,.... And possess it, as the Lord had bid them, and Moses encouraged them to do, as well as Joshua and Caleb, who were two of the spies sent into it:

but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God; disregarded the word of the Lord, and disobeyed his command, and thereby bitterly provoked him, which rebellion against him, their King and God, might well do.

Geneva Study Bible

Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

26–33. The Disaffection of the People

Israel defied the command to go up (Deuteronomy 1:26), murmuring that in hate God had brought them from Egypt, to be destroyed by the Amorite (Deuteronomy 1:27). quoting the spies that the people of the land were taller with fenced cities, and the ‘Anakim were there (Deuteronomy 1:28). Moses exhorted them not to fear, Jehovah would fight for them (Deuteronomy 1:29 ff.). But they persisted in unbelief (Deuteronomy 1:32), though God had never failed to guide them (Deuteronomy 1:33).—In the parallel account which is compiled from JE and P the few J E fragments, Numbers 13:30 f., Numbers 13:33, Deuteronomy 14:1 b, Deuteronomy 14:3 f., Deuteronomy 14:8-9 b, imply the people’s disquietude at the spies’ report and state that Caleb quieted them, but the other spies contradicted, affirming that the giant ‘Anakim (J), the Nephîlim (E), were in the land. The people wept, Why doth Jehovah bring us to this land to fall by the sword? were it not better to return to Egypt under another captain? Someone (Caleb?) exhorted them not to fear, Jehovah is with us.—P, Numbers 13:32; Numbers 14:1 a, Numbers 14:2; Num 14:5; Num 14:9 a, Numbers 14:10 a, states that on the evil report of the spies, that the land was hungry and the men of great stature, the congregation murmured (a different term from that in the deuteronomic review) against Moses and Aaron. Would God we had died in the wilderness! Moses and Aaron fell prostrate, while Joshua and Caleb rent their clothes and affirmed the land to be exceeding good. But the congregation bade stone them.

Thus all three accounts agree on the main facts: (1) that the spies were divided in reporting (any variations as to this are merely of emphasis), (2) that the people refused to go up from fear of the taller peoples of the land; (3) that they murmured against God (so even P, Numbers 14:27), (4) that they were exhorted to faith, and still disbelieved. The differences are—JE mentions only Caleb as urgent to go on, P Caleb and Joshua, the deuteronomic review neither, though the writer had those in mind as appears from the next section; JE reports the proposal to return to Egypt, P only a wish to die in the desert; P alone mentions the proposal of stoning.—Each writer, as elsewhere, uses his own style, our passage being full of characteristic deuteronomic phrases. But its main distinction is its religious spirit. Summarising the JE narrative, with a few verbal coincidences, it finely indicates the moral character of the people’s disaffection—opposing to their fears founded on a few men’s reports their own long and indubitable experience of their God’s unfailing providence.

Deuteronomy 1:26. ye would not] A phrase found seven times in D against three in the rest of the Pent.

rebelled, etc.] Web. defied the month of: another deuteronomic phrase.

Deuteronomy 1:26

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"But ye would not go up, and were rebellious against the mouth (i.e., the express will) of Jehovah our God, and murmured in your tents, and said, Because Jehovah hated us, He hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us." שׂנאה, either an infinitive with a feminine termination, or a verbal noun construed with an accusative (see Ges. 133; Ewald, 238, a.). - By the allusion to the murmuring in the tents, Moses points them to Numbers 14:1, and then proceeds to describe the rebellion of the congregation related there (Deuteronomy 1:2-4), in such a manner that the state of mind manifested on that occasion presents the appearance of the basest ingratitude, inasmuch as the people declared the greatest blessing conferred upon them by God, viz., their deliverance from Egypt, to have been an act of hatred on His part. At the same time, by addressing the existing members of the nation, as if they themselves had spoken so, whereas the whole congregation that rebelled at Kadesh had fallen in the desert, and a fresh generation was now gathered round him, Moses points to the fact, that the sinful corruption which broke out at that time, and bore such bitter fruit, had not died out with the older generation, but was germinating still in the existing Israel, and even though it might be deeply hidden in their hearts, would be sure to break forth again.