“Then the Lord said ‘All right, I will pardon them as you requested, But I vow by my own name that just as it is true that all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, so it is true that not one of the men who has seen my glory and the miracles I did in Egypt and in the wilderness-and ten times refused to trust me and obey me- shall ever see the land promised to this people’s ancestors.”
Moses allows himself to breathe now. It was as if all the children of Israel had been holding their breath as one, and were now exhaling as one. Moses had saved them. His prayer, powerful because of his walk with God, had actually changed the mind of the Lord Almighty. But surely, though not death, some punishment must come.
And come it did. Because of the report from the spies, and because of the threatened murder of God’s appointed leaders, and because they had no excuse because they had seen his mighty power and glory at work WITH THEIR OWN EYES, the Lord vowed they could not claim the land that he had given them, but they had been too scared to claim as their own, until all men who were alive at that time had died. Moses, and those of his generation, would never cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land.
Copyright 2007 Timothy E. Davis