Twelve Spies Survey Canaan
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hath followed Me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he
went; and his seed shall possess it.” As the spies had spent forty days
in their journey, so the hosts of Israel were to wander in the wilderness
forty years.
An Example of False Repentance
When Moses made known to the people the divine decision, they
knew that their punishment was just. The ten unfaithful spies, divinely
smitten by the plague, perished before the eyes of all Israel; and in
their fate the people read their own doom.
Now they seemed sincerely to repent; but they sorrowed because
of the result of their evil course rather than from a sense of their
ingratitude and disobedience. When they found that the Lord did not
relent in His decree, their self-will again arose and they declared that
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they would not return into the wilderness. God tested their apparent
submission and proved it was not real. Their hearts were unchanged,
and they only needed an excuse to occasion a similar outbreak. Had
they mourned for their sin when it was faithfully laid before them this
sentence would not have been pronounced; but they mourned for the
judgment. Their sorrow was not repentance and could not secure a
reversing of their sentence.
That night was spent in lamentation, but with the morning they
resolved to redeem their cowardice. When God had bidden them go up
and take the land, they had refused; and now when He directed them
to retreat, they were equally rebellious.
God had made it their privilege and duty to enter the land at the time
of His appointment, but through their willful neglect that permission
had been withdrawn. Satan now urged them on to do the very thing in
the face of divine prohibition which they had refused to do when God
required it, leading them to rebel the second time. “We have sinned
against the Lord,” they cried. “We will go up and fight, according to all
that the Lord our God commanded us.”
Deuteronomy 1:41
. So terribly
blinded had they become! The Lord had never commanded them to
“go up and fight.” It was not His purpose that they should gain the land
by warfare, but by strict obedience to His commands.
“We have sinned,” they confessed, acknowledging that the fault
was in themselves and not in God, whom they had wickedly charged