NOTES for Deu 2:1-37
According to the Book of Deuteronomy, during the journey from Sinai to the borders of the land promised by God, the generation of those who had left Egypt passed away. Only then, as God had told Moses at Sinai, did the conquest of the land begin. It was, of course, not accomplished at once, and the journey itself took a long time. Moses was a little over eighty when God first revealed Himself to him at Sinai, and he died in the steppes of Transjordan at the age of one hundred and twenty.
Forty years passed from the day the people left Egypt before they were ready to enter the land God had promised to their fathers. Among the ancient Hebrews, forty years was the span of one generation. More precisely, it was not a lifespan but a period of active capacity, considered to extend from the age of twenty to sixty. Yet it often happened, as it did with Moses, that a person accomplished the chief work of their life far beyond the bounds of this “age of active capacity.”
In this case, we can say that a whole generation—the generation that might be called the generation of the Exodus—left the scene. Their children began the conquest of the land God had promised to the people, but it fell not to those children, but to the grandchildren of those who had left Egypt, to complete it. The conquest stretched over three generations, and this was certainly no accident. It is well known that first-generation settlers, whether emigrants or returning expatriates, are still inclined to look back. Psychologically, they have not yet fully parted from their former homeland, apart from the rare exceptions that, of course, always exist.
Their children, especially those born after the move, usually already feel themselves to be local residents, yet still remember that they are the children of newcomers, and this memory can leave its mark on their lives and their perception of reality. The grandchildren of those who moved to a new place already feel themselves to be local residents completely and unreservedly. They have nowhere and no reason to return, even in purely theoretical terms; if they remember their origins at all, it is through certain domestic customs and national festivals, provided there is anyone with whom to celebrate them.
That is the external, ethnopsychological side of the matter. There is also another, deeper and properly spiritual aspect, although it is connected with the external one. God’s work can be done only without looking back, whether at those around us or at our own past. To conquer the land, the people had to lose the habit of constantly looking back and remembering Egypt. That is why they had to wait for a new generation: the children and grandchildren of those who left Egypt were ready to fight for their land without looking back, and to follow God in the same way.