(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
Numbers 33:50–56, “And the LORD spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan; Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places: And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein: for I have given you the land to possess it. And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man’s inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit. But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. Moreover it shall come to pass, that I shall do unto you, as I thought to do unto them.”
The Pains of Moab were just outside the Promised Land. They are now in the Kingdom of Jordan and on the eastern bank of the Jordan River. This was as far as Moses was allowed to go before his task as Israel’s first leader was completed. However, the Lord still had work for Moses to do. Moses had spent much of his life bringing the Lord’s message to the people He called the apple of His eye. The Lord spoke to Moses and Moses spoke to the people. The Lord was qualified to give instructions to Israel because He was responsible for delivering them from slavery in Egypt. Moses was qualified to pass the Lord’s message on because Moses obeyed the Lord and was His agent in delivering Israel from slavery. When the Lord first promised the Land to Abraham, He told him that iniquity of the Amorites wasn’t complete, they still had time to repent (see Genesis 15:16, “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.”) By the time that Moses camped with Israel on the eastern bank of the Jordan River the iniquity of the Amorites was complete and Israel was ready to act as the Lord’s agents in punishing them for debasing the good Land that the Lord had given them. However, Israel had to make sure that they eradicated all the practices of the Amorites that led to their debasement of the Land. After that, the Land was to be divided among all the families of Israel. This was, in effect, the Lord’s retirement strategy for Israel. The Land was meant to remain with each family and when a person was too old to work any more then their inheritance would pass on to their children and the children would be called upon to care for their aged parents. Israel had to understand that, if they debased the Land, they could expect the same outcome that they were inflicting on the Amorites, with one difference, the Lord would drive Israel out of the Land so that they would be forced to their knees in repentance and then He would bring them back for His glory and their good.
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