The Pulpit Commentary on Deuteronomy 1:34-40

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

The excluded and the admitted.

I. THE EXCLUDED.

1. That whole unbelieving generation, with two excerptions (Deuteronomy 1:35). Note:

2. The holy Moses (Deuteronomy 1:37; cf. on Deuteronomy 3:26; Deuteronomy 4:21; Deuteronomy 34:4). The exclusion of Moses will be more fully considered afterwards, but we learn from it here that God's apparent severity is often greatest to his own people (Amos 3:2), and that the share which others have had in leading us into sin does not abate our own responsibility in the commission of it. This greater apparent severity

II. THE ADMITTED. These were to be:

1. The faithful two—Caleb and Joshua (verses 36, 38). The former is signalized as having "wholly followed the Lord," and Joshua was a man of like faith and staunchness in a time of general defection. Such persons God will singularly preserve and honor. Their place in heaven will be a high one. "We must, in a course of obedience to God's will and of service to his honor, follow him universally, without dividing; uprightly, without dissembling; cheerfully, without disputing; and constantly, without declining; and this is following the Lord fully" (Matthew Henry, on Numbers 14:24). 2. The younger generation (verse 39). Instead of the fathers, God would take the children. What a rebuke!—

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