And ye came near to me all of you, and said, We will send men before us, who shall examine the land for us, and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up, and of the cities to which we shall come.
Israel stands at the edge of the promised land, told to go up and take it. Instead the whole nation asks Moses to send men ahead first — the very mission Numbers 13 records as God's own command.
Numbers records what happened. Deuteronomy shows what was going on underneath.
Then comes the account of the inner motives for the sending of the spies. This is worth noting, since we would not have discovered it from the book of Numbers. What we have here is not a repetition. It leads us into the secret things — what was working in the people and hindering their blessing. The chief point to observe is this: there was no spirit of obedience in the people. They lacked it because there was no faith in God.
Numbers 13 opens with the Lord telling Moses to send men. Here Moses says the people came to him. Three wills appear in the one event, in order.
Moses reminded them that it was they themselves who pushed for sending the spies to search out the land. This appears to clash with Numbers 13:1-2, which says, "The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 'Send men to spy out the land of Canaan.'" The two passages show that the people proposed it. Moses consented — it pleased him well, he says here. And God commanded it. God's first message was, "Go up, take possession"; but the people hesitated and said they would send the spies. Their rebellion and their wanderings were the result.
That order matters when reading Numbers. A command from God is not proof that He approved.
We learn, most clearly, from Deuteronomy 1:22 that the idea of sending the spies had its origin in the heart of Israel. God saw their moral condition, and He issued a command that fully matched it.
The command Moses had just delivered contained no hint of a survey party. Everything the spies could report, God had already told them.
Had they been governed by simple faith, they would have acted on those stirring words of Moses: "See, the LORD your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed." There is not one syllable about spies in this splendid passage. What does faith want with spies, when it has the word and the presence of the living God? If the LORD had given them a land, it must be worth having. … Had He not spied out the land for them, and told them all about it? And was that not enough? What need was there to send men to spy out the land?
Notice how the people phrase it. They never say they doubt whether to enter — only that they want to know the route and the first cities.
Here in Deuteronomy we learn that the people had appealed to Moses to send spies into the land first. They did not say they wanted this to find out whether it was safe for them to go in or not. They said instead that this way they could find out which route to take and which cities they would reach first. This suggestion pleased Moses well, he says.
They already had a guide who never failed.
The folly of unbelief was never more obvious. The Lord had guided His people by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Now they will trust the information the spies may bring about the way they should take. After such a long experience of the Lord's faithfulness, they think more of the wisdom of men than of His perfect knowledge. How often have we fallen into the same trap.
Moses reports his own reaction without excusing it. A leader agreeing with a faithless suggestion is part of the failure.
Deuteronomy 1:21 gives the answer. There we find the word of the LORD God, "Go up, take possession" — not search it. The people say they will send men to spy out the land. This is disobedience. Moses is pleased with their proposal. Was it faith to be pleased? Why listen to the people when God had said, "Go up, take possession"? It is at least weak to encourage others down a faithless path.
The reason runs deeper. God could not be the source of a plan that doubted His own word.
God had rested Israel on the faithfulness of His word and promise. How then could He have started something that was really a slur on His truthfulness and the certainty of His word? No; the LORD permitted it, but He never originated it.
- Motive — Deuteronomy shows the heart behind the act: no obedience, because there was no faith.
- Origin — the people proposed, Moses agreed, then God commanded. That order explains the account in Numbers 13.
- Permission — God's command was not God's approval. He allowed what He never originated.
- Disguise — the request sounded practical. It asked only about the route, yet it preferred the word of men to the pillar of cloud.
- Result — a sensible-sounding survey ended in rebellion and forty years of wandering.
And the matter was good in mine eyes; and I took twelve men of you, one man for a tribe.
Israel stood at the edge of the promised land, and the people asked Moses to send spies in first. The verse sounds like a small administrative note, but it tells us what a leader felt about a plan God had never made.
True, in the history given in Numbers, the Lord told Moses to send the spies. But why? Because of the moral condition of the people. Here we see the characteristic difference and yet the lovely harmony of the two books. Numbers gives us the public history. Deuteronomy gives us the secret source behind sending the spies... We could not fully understand the subject if we had only the history given in Numbers. It is the touching commentary given in Deuteronomy which completes the picture.
What the second account exposes is not a new fact but a motive.
Then comes the account of the inner motives for the sending of the spies. This is well to note, as we would not have discovered it from the book of Numbers. This is not a repeat of the story. It leads us into things that were secret — what was working in the people and holding back their blessing. The main point to notice is that the people had no spirit of obedience. They lacked it because they had no faith in God.
If God told Moses to send them, how could sending them be wrong? Commentators answer by separating the act from the wish behind it.
The wrong was not in the act of sending them when they were told, but in the wish to send them at all. The wish was the fruit of unbelief; and the command to send them was because of that unbelief.
A command given on those terms still has to be obeyed. What comes out of it then tells its own story.
God commands many things, and we are bound to do them as soon as He commands them. His ways are displayed in how they turn out. Yet the only reason for them is our lack of faith. So the outcome gives full confirmation to the faith of the faithful, the faith of the remnant. But unbelief reaps what it has sown.
Moses had just passed on God's word to go up and take the land. Then he found himself pleased with a plan to inspect it first.
Deuteronomy 1:21 gives the answer. There we find the word of the Lord God: "Go up, take possession" — not search it. The people say they will send men to spy out the land. This is disobedience. Moses is pleased with their proposal. Was it faith to be pleased? Why listen to the people when God had said, "Go up and take possession"? It is at least weak to encourage others in a faithless path. Still, God heard their words and tested the people. Now He gives the command, "Send men."
The same writer notes how ordinary this failure is: saints "overlook the path of faith and give way to circumstances, even to being pleased with what is not according to the word of God."
The search took forty days. It settled nothing that God's word had not already settled.
But look — they search the land for forty days, only to prove that God's word about it is true. It was really unbelief that sent out these spies. Do I need to search and see whether God is true? Certainly not. Have I any reason to doubt Him? Not at all.
Commentators point out what unbelief then did with the difficulties it found.
At first the report brought to Moses is in a right spirit. But the difficulties show up at once, and unbelief measures them by man instead of by God.
The lasting warning is about a habit: investigating instead of obeying.
The Lord sanctioned it, but it was still the working of unbelief. Instead of going on in simple faith, how often we raise a cloud of questions to get a human estimate of a thing. In the end we only find that the walls are up to heaven. Instead of doing the thing that has to be done, we look at every question and difficulty anyone can raise. And so it ended in their not going into the land at all.
- Motive. Numbers tells us the spies were sent. Deuteronomy tells us why — the plan came from the people's own hearts, not from God's word.
- Root. What they lacked was not information but obedience. They lacked obedience because they had no faith.
- Permission. God's command to send them came because of the unbelief; a granted wish is no proof the wish was right.
- Pleasure. Moses was pleased with a plan that set aside God's word, "Go up, take possession." To encourage others down a faithless path is itself weakness.
- Result. Forty days of searching only confirmed what God had already said. Raising questions instead of taking steps ended with Israel never entering the land.