Learning Trust at the Edge of the Wilderness

These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.—Through the wilderness, in the Arabah near Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab, it is eleven days from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea by the Mount Seir route.— It was in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, that Moses addressed the Israelites in accordance with the instructions that GOD had given him for them, after he had defeated Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, and King Og of Bashan, who dwelt at Ashtaroth [and] Edrei. On the other side of the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this Teaching. He said: The ETERNAL our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying: You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Start out and make your way to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, the hill country, the Shephelah, the Negeb, the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and the Lebanon, as far as the Great River, the river Euphrates. See, I place the land at your disposal. Go, take possession of the land that GOD swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them. Thereupon I said to you, “I cannot bear the burden of you by myself. The ETERNAL your God has multiplied you until you are today as numerous as the stars in the sky.— May the ETERNAL, the God of your ancestors, increase your numbers a thousandfold, and bless you as promised.— How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering! Pick from each of your tribes individuals who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads.” You answered me and said, “What you propose to do is good.” So I took your tribal leaders, wise and experienced men, and appointed them heads over you: chiefs of thousands, chiefs of hundreds, chiefs of fifties, and chiefs of tens, and officials for your tribes. I charged your magistrates at that time as follows, “Hear out your fellow Israelites, and decide justly between one party and the other—be it a fellow Israelite or a stranger. You shall not be partial in judgment: hear out low and high alike. Fear no one, for judgment is God’s. And any matter that is too difficult for you, you shall bring to me and I will hear it.” Thus I instructed you, at that time, about the various things that you should do. We set out from Horeb and traveled the great and terrible wilderness that you saw, along the road to the hill country of the Amorites, as the ETERNAL our God had commanded us. When we reached Kadesh-barnea, I said to you, “You have come to the hill country of the Amorites that the ETERNAL our God is giving to us. See, the ETERNAL your God has placed the land at your disposal. Go up, take possession, as the ETERNAL, the God of your fathers, promised you. Fear not and be not dismayed.” Then all of you came to me and said, “Let us send agents ahead to reconnoiter the land for us and bring back word on the route we shall follow and the cities we shall come to.” I approved of the plan, and so I selected twelve of you, one representative from each tribe. They made for the hill country, came to the wadi Eshcol, and spied it out. They took some of the fruit of the land with them and brought it down to us. And they gave us this report: “It is a good land that the ETERNAL our God is giving to us.” Yet you refused to go up, and flouted the command of the ETERNAL your God. You sulked uncertain. in your tents and said, “It is out of hatred for us that GOD brought us out of the land of Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to wipe us out. What kind of place are we going to? Our brothers have taken the heart out of us, saying, ‘We saw there a people stronger and taller than we, large cities with walls sky-high, and even Anakites.’” I said to you, “Have no dread or fear of them. None other than the ETERNAL your God, who goes before you, will fight for you—just as [God] did for you in Egypt before your very eyes, and in the wilderness, where you saw how the ETERNAL your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you traveled until you came to this place. Yet for all that, you have no faith in the ETERNAL your God, who goes before you on your journeys—to scout the place where you are to encamp—in fire by night and in cloud by day, in order to guide you on the route you are to follow.” Upon hearing your loud complaint, GOD became angry and vowed: Not one of those involved, this evil generation, shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers— none except Caleb son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and his descendants will I give the land on which he set foot, because he remained loyal to GOD.— Because of you GOD was incensed with me too, saying: You shall not enter it either. Joshua son of Nun, who attends you, he shall enter it. Imbue him with strength, for he shall allot it to Israel.— Moreover, your little ones who you

Deuteronomy 1:1-20 records Moses' opening address on the plains of Moab. Standing at the threshold of the Promised Land, Israel looks back at Horeb (Sinai), where God said, 'You have stayed long enough at this mountain.' The text pairs a divine promise ('See, I place the land at your disposal') with a human response ('What you propose to do is good'). Between them, Moses models what faith looks like in community: acknowledging weakness ('I cannot bear the burden of you by myself'), organizing leaders, and trusting God to multiply a people already 'as numerous as the stars.'