Israel's journey from Egypt to the threshold of the promised land is chronicled in chapter 33. I tried looking these place up on maps to try to find out what their journey actually looked like. Only thing we really have are educated guesses. The point is, they took 40 years to travel about 200-ish miles. If they traveled every day, taking the sabbath off, that's a mind-blowing rate of about 72 feet per day. No, that's feet-per-day. Does God take his sweet time, people?
The passage lists off about forty places where the Israelites stopped and camped.
The people had made it as far as Rithmah in the desert of Paran before they lost their minds and rebelled after hearing the scouts' report. That wasn't even in the right direction of the promised land. If these people knew where the promised land was, and continued to be led by this cloud in the wrong direction, no wonder they were ready to rebel so easily.
Moses, who still hasn't been gathered unto his people after seeing the promised land from the mountain in chapter 27, and devastating the Midianites in chapter 31, is told to instruct the Israelites on how to capture the land. Interesting that this land was given to them, but they still had to go in and take it.
The Israelites were to follow the five Ds: Drive out, Destroy, Demolish, Distribute, and Drive out.
- Drive out the inhabitants
- Destroy carved images and cast idols
- Demolish the high places
- Distribute the land by lot.
Seems easy enough. Go forth into the land, and with God on their side, they kick butt and take land. Biblical narrative over. Everyone lives happily ever after.
But verse 55 serves as a warning as to what would happen if they don't follow the 5 D's. The inhabitants would become "barbs in their eyes" and "thorns in their sides." Then God will turn his anger on the Israelites as opposed to the people the Israelites were supposed to wipe out.
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