‘ Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of Yahweh your God, and you murmured in your tents, and said, “Because Yahweh hated us, he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our heart melt, saying, The people are greater and taller than we, the cities are great and fortified up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.” '
But in spite of their appreciation of the land, and their recognition that it was a good land, their fathers had refused to go forward. They had rebelled against Yahweh's command, and had come together in their tents (note the stress on their clandestine muttering) muttering and murmuring in an attitude of total antagonism. ‘Returning to tents' was a description of cessation from mobilisation (Joshua 22:8) and of withdrawal from authority (1 Kings 12:16). They were declaring themselves not ready for service.
This had resulted in their looking back and declaring that the deliverance from Egypt which had so delighted their hearts two years earlier, and over which they had been so jubilant, had only really occurred because Yahweh ‘hated' them. The word for ‘hate' can simply indicate lack of special consideration or an attitude of ‘not-loving' (see Genesis 29:31), rather than positive hatred, but here they were being childish and imputed to God unworthy sentiments as though He had acted petulantly like the gods of other nations as revealed in mythology. There is a deliberate contrast here on Moses' part of their faithless attitude as compared with Yahweh's constant love for them (Deuteronomy 4:37; Deuteronomy 7:7-9) and the love for Yahweh that the covenant demands (Deuteronomy 6:5). They were seeing Him as the exact opposite of what He actually was to them.
The words ‘love' and ‘hate' are covenant words. When a suzerain had made his treaty with a conquered people he called on them to show their ‘love' for him, and ‘hate' towards his enemies (compare Psalms 139:21-22), and described those who rejected the covenant as those who ‘hated' him. They were thus here charging Yahweh with failure to keep His covenant. They were suggesting treachery. We too always see God as ‘hard' when He does not let us have our own way.
So their fathers had begun to claim that He had simply delivered them from Egypt in order to put them in an even worse situation, indeed, in order to destroy them, because of His malice against them. Better to be in bondage in Egypt than to be dead at the hands of the Amorites!
We are all familiar with how such ideas can spread. For their minds had been gripped by the pictures outlined to them by the scouts, and they had continued to magnify them until they imagined large armies of larger than average people (Numbers 13:32), vast cities with great, insurmountable walls (Numbers 13:28), and even worse, the sons of the Anakim, of fearsome reputation and renowned for their huge build, and even more fearful when seen in the imagination (Numbers 13:33 where the fearful described them as ‘the Nephilim', and saw them as semi-divine - compare Genesis 6:4). They had panicked. In their disappointment their imaginations had run riot, and they had asked themselves, ‘what on earth are we being expected to face?'. It was the opposite of faith.
And unless we exercise faith we too are all very good at magnifying difficulties. Let us learn from this never to so build up difficulties in our minds that they become seemingly insurmountable.
“The sons of the Anakim.” These were famed for their great size (compare Deuteronomy 2:10; Deuteronomy 2:21) and were connected with Hebron (Numbers 13:22; Joshua 15:13) from where they spread, and some went to Gaza (Joshua 11:21). Because of their size they would be valuable as mercenaries. Joshua in fact destroyed them and drove the remnants from their territory (Joshua 11:21). This destruction was probably connected with the description in Joshua 14:12-15; Joshua 15:13-14; Judges 1:10. It may be these who are mentioned in the Egyptian execration texts under the reference to “the ruler of Iy-‘anaq”.
How easy it is for us as well to declare ourselves ready to obey God, and then to change our minds as soon as difficulties begin to arise. Better a cosy useless life, we decide, rather than to have to face up to problems and overcome them. But we must beware. It is then we risk losing ‘the land'. For it is as we do face up to these problems that the difficulties begin to melt away before us, even though it might take time.