And Moses said, &c.— Those two tribes had applied to Moses for a settlement in the country where they were, and desired that they might not be brought over Jordan, Numbers 32:5. This justly irritated the spirit of Moses, who, with a proper indignation, said unto them, shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here? He remarked, that their ill example would certainly much dishearten the rest of their brethren; in which view he tells them that they are acting the part of their predecessors, the spies, who discouraged the rest of the people by their fears, and so kindled the Lord's anger against that generation, that they were all, for their mutinous and distrustful spirit, excluded from the land of Canaan. He, therefore, exhorts them to beware of the same spirit, lest the same evil consequences should follow, and the people be left to perish in the wilderness; Numbers 32:15.
Numbers 32:6-15
6 And Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben, Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here?
7 And wherefore discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the LORD hath given them?
8 Thus did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadeshbarnea to see the land.
9 For when they went up unto the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land which the LORD had given them.
10 And the LORD'S anger was kindled the same time, and he sware, saying,
11 Surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not whollyb followed me:
12 Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite, and Joshua the son of Nun: for they have wholly followed the LORD.
13 And the LORD'S anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation, that had done evil in the sight of the LORD, was consumed.
14 And, behold, ye are risen up in your fathers' stead, an increase of sinful men, to augment yet the fierce anger of the LORD toward Israel.
15 For if ye turn away from after him, he will yet again leave them in the wilderness; and ye shall destroy all this people.