Deuteronomy 1:38

Joshua the son of Nun So Deuteronomy 3:28; P, Numbers 27:18 ff.; not given in JE.

which standeth before thee Deuteronomy 10:8; so a servant stood before his lord, a courtier before his king, and the Levites before Jehovah. JE, Exodus 24:13 f., the minister of Moses.

encourage thou him lit. him make thou strong. The vb ḥizzeḳ, alone as here, or with the synonymous vb "immeṣDeuteronomy 3:28; or in their intransitive forms Deuteronomy 31:6-7; Deuteronomy 31:23. Cp. Deuteronomy 11:8; Deuteronomy 12:23 (be firm).

cause … to inherit characteristic of D: used of Joshua here, Deuteronomy 3:28; Deuteronomy 31:7; Joshua 1:6; but of God 12 to, Deuteronomy 19:3. Outside D only in Jeremiah 3:18; Jeremiah 12:14; Ezekiel 46:18 and later writers. P uses another form of the vb, Numbers 34:29; Joshua 13:32; Joshua 14:1; Joshua 19:51.

Further Note to Deuteronomy 1:36. Because Moses has just been described as seeking to turn the people from their sin, 29 ff., and it is therefore unreasonable to include him in their punishment; because Deuteronomy 1:37 needlessly anticipate Deuteronomy 3:26; Deuteronomy 3:28 and Deuteronomy 4:21; and because Deuteronomy 1:39 in whole or part follows suitably on Deuteronomy 1:36; therefore Deuteronomy 1:37 are taken by many (Dillm., W. R. Smith, Steuern., Berth, etc.) as a later addition to the text. And indeed the beginning of Deuteronomy 1:39 shows that the original has been disturbed by an editorial hand (see below). Steuern. would also omit Deuteronomy 1:36 on the ground that Kaleb has not been previously mentioned in this survey. But Kaleb is mentioned in JE on which this survey otherwise depends. In whatever way these textual questions may be decided, the parallel passages Deuteronomy 3:26 ff. and Deuteronomy 4:21 confirm the fact of a D tradition or statement that Jehovah was angry with Moses for the people's sake. This can only mean, their guilt was great enough to include the very leader who had done his best to dissuade them from their disaffection! Now neither JE nor P gives any hint of so remarkable a judgement. On the contrary, P accounts for the exclusion of Moses by his own sin in striking the rock at Ḳadesh 37 years after this disaffection of Israel, Numbers 21:10 ff; Numbers 27:13 f.; Deuteronomy 32:50 f. The most reasonable explanation of such discrepancies is that they are discrepancies not of fact but or opinion. The earliest tradition, JE, merely held the facts that Kaleb survived and that Moses died on the eve of the possession of the Promised Land. The problem, which arose from this contrast of fortune, the deuteronomic writers solved by the statement that Moses was included in the guilt of the people when, startled by the report of the spies, they refused to invade Canaan from the S. in the second year of the wandering; and this agrees with the deuteronomic principle of the ethical solidarity of Israel. But the later priestly writer or writers, under the influence of the idea, first emphasized in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jeremiah 31:29 f., Ezekiel 18), that every man died because of his own sin, found a solution for the problem in Moses" own guilt in presumptuously striking the rock at Ḳadesh, 37 years later. In this double engagement, from two different standpoints, with so difficult a problem, note the strong evidence that the survival of Kaleb and the death of Moses before Israel's entrance to the Land were regarded as irremoveable elements of the early tradition.