Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, This day - means this time. The Israelites had 40 years before reached the confines of the promised land, but were obliged, to their great mortification, to return. But now were they certainly to enter it.
To possess nations greater and mightier than thyself - (see the note at Deuteronomy 7:1.) No obstacle could prevent their possession: neither the fortified defenses of the towns nor the resistance of the gigantic inhabitants, of whom they had received from the spies so formidable a description.
Cities great, and fenced up to heaven. Oriental cities generally cover a much greater space than those in Europe; because the houses often stand apart, with gardens and fields intervening. They are almost all surrounded with walls, built of burnt or sun-dried bricks, about 40 feet in height. All classes in the East, but especially the nomad tribes, in their ignorance of engineering and artillery, would abandon in despair the idea of an assault on a walled town which European soldiers would demolish in a few hours.