‘ And Yahweh said to me, “Say to them, Do not go not up, nor fight, for I am not among you, lest you be smitten before your enemies.”
So Yahweh, Who knew the truth of what would lay ahead, had now commanded them not to go forward. The command was clear. They were not to go forward, they were not to fight, because Yahweh would not be fighting for them. Thus the danger was that they would be smitten by their enemies.
‘ So I spoke to you, and you did not listen, but you rebelled against the commandment of Yahweh, and were presumptuous, and went up into the hill-country.'
And Moses had given their fathers Yahweh's command, but as ever they had been disobedient. Having rebelled when He said ‘Go forward', they had now rebelled when He said, ‘About turn'. Whatever God said ‘do' they would not listen to. They ‘were presumptuous and went up into the hill country'. They were presumptuous because they went up without God's permission, indeed in spite of His refusal to allow it. They would certainly be without their general Joshua. They would be without Moses whose faith and confidence had previously sustained them in battle. They would be without the staff of God which symbolised His powerful activity on their behalf. Thus they would be ill prepared for what lay ahead. They had really only gone because they could not bear the thought of facing the wilderness again. They just assumed that somehow God would help them as He always had. But they forgot that they were no longer the people that God had brought up to this point. Their hearts had become set in unbelief.
‘ And the Amorites, who dwelt in that hill-country, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do, and beat you down in Seir, even to Hormah.'
The net result could only be disaster. They had met the Amorites on their own territory, men who had had plenty of experience at defending it and knew every inch of the ground, while their own leaders were inexperienced. Thus the Amorites had come out like a swarm of bees and had driven them back so that they were beaten down in Edom (Seir), and then fled to Hormah. ‘As bees do' probably refers to a descending swarm. All had known of cases of people who, being attacked by a swarm of bees, could not get away from them. And that was how it had felt before these fierce Amorites who did not stop until they were well clear of the hill country. ‘Seir' would be the part below the Dead Sea. Hormah was probably a town north east of Kadesh. It means ‘devoted to destruction' and may therefore refer to a ruin, although, if it was the same town as is mentioned in Judges 1:17, the name was given to it when the Israelites captured it and dedicated it to destruction. if that is the case ‘even to Hormah' may be a note added by a later scribe. But it is probable that there were a number of Hormahs, for the word simply means ‘a ruin', and may have applied to a number of desolate sites. It is probably not accidental that that was named as the terminus for the people, for they were ‘devoted to destruction' in the wilderness.
Thus on entering the land in unbelief they had immediately again been driven out of it. There had been no place in Yahweh's land for unbelief, a lesson that was also important for the future. For God was not bringing them to the land just for their own good, but because He had a purpose to perform through them, and if they were not fitted for that purpose they would be excluded. This doctrine of those who were unfit being turned out of the land is ancient. Once the land had been promised to Abraham and his descendants it was indeed inevitable. For the very basis of the covenant with Abraham was that all those who failed to respond to the covenant would eventually be excluded from the land (Genesis 15:16).