An Overness / Unwilling to Go Up

Hello all!

We’re making our way through Deuteronomy now. Well, “making our way” is probably not the best phrase, since we’re still in chapter 1! This poem is a meditation on 1:26 in particular, but here’s more of the context, with a little highlighting to draw attention to their ups and downs, so to speak, beginning at 1:19~

Then, as the LORD our God commanded us, we set out from Horeb and went toward the hill country of the Amorites through all that vast and dreadful wilderness that you have seen, and so we reached Kadesh Barnea. Then I said to you, “You have reached the hill country of the Amorites, which the LORD our God is giving us. See, the LORD your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

Then all of you came to me and said, “Let us send men ahead to spy out the land…”

…so I selected twelve of you, one man from each tribe. They left and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshkol and explored it. Taking with them some of the fruit of the land, they brought it down to us and reported, “It is a good land that the LORD our God is giving us.”

But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, “The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’”

Typing that out for you here revealed to me how many times the “LORD your God” was repeated in these few verses — 6 times! Moses is re-telling the story and filling it with reminders as to Who their God is, or you might say Whose they are.

But as we well know, they did not “go up” and take possession of this land at this point. Here’s the poem~

~Deuteronomy 1:26

The heights do not belong to us,
   nor do the clouds.
When you brought us up
   out of Egypt, lifted the waters
to the heavens so we might
   pass through, we called to mind
the One who passed over.
   How the mighty Pharaoh fell
beside his son and wailed—
   how the sky released the hail—
how the darkness that covered us
   came from above.
Every time we lift our heads, Moses,
   so does the locust. We cried out
in vain for generations
   as the whip fell—yes, our necks
are stiff, bent low. And what now,
   giants? You command us to go up
to the Promise, to our Land—
   but our feet are lead. Our hearts
have sunk into the dust.

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Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience. ~ Hebrews 4:11

Further up & further in,

Anna