---

I. THE EXCLUDED.

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

(1) Their unbelief and disobedience did not frustrate God's purpose of the occupation of the land. Canaan was occupied after all. So heaven will be peopled, the world conquered, and God's work done, though we in our folly and sin rebel and stand aloof (Matthew 3:9). "It remaineth that some must enter in" (Hebrews 4:6).

(2) Their unbelief and disobedience effectually excluded themselves. God swore it in his wrath, and the sentence admitted of no reversal. A foreshadowing of the final exclusion from heaven of those who persistently disobey (Matthew 7:21-24; Luke 13:24-29; Hebrews 4:11; Revelation 22:11-16).

2. The holy Moses (ver. 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

(1) repels the charge of favoritism;

(2) gives a peculiarly impressive demonstration of the evil of sin;

(3) reminds us that sin in God's people is more dishonoring to him than it is in others;

(4) warns the wicked. For if judgment begin at the righteous, "what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" (1 Peter 4:17, 18).

II. THE ADMITTED. These were to be:

1. The faithful two - Caleb and Joshua (vers. 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 (ver. 39). Instead of the fathers, God would take the children. What a rebuke! -

(1) of their groundless bars. "Your little ones, which ye said should be a prey."

(2) Of their unmanly cowardice. Their little children, types of all that was humanly feeble, would do the work they were afraid to attempt.

(3) Of their inconsiderate Selfishness. They were not ashamed to hand down to these children their own abandoned life-tasks, with all the work and peril, if also with all the reward and honor, attending their accomplishment. Was not this to make themselves objects of contempt to their own offspring? "Let no man take thy crown," least of all thine own child, - J.O.

---

---

KJV: And the LORD heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and sware, saying,

WEB: Yahweh heard the voice of your words, and was angry, and swore, saying,