Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Let Me Go Over and See
Deuteronomy 3:21-29
21 I commanded Joshua at that time, saying, “Your eyes have seen all that Yahweh your God has done to these two kings. So shall Yahweh do to all the kingdoms where you go over. · WEB
Moses asks once for the thing he wants most, is refused, and is given a mountain to see it from and a man to hand it to.
The prayer is the most personal thing in the book, and it is quoted rather than summarized.
He begins with praise and it is not flattery: you have begun to show your servant your greatness, and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or in earth that can do works like yours? Deuteronomy 3:24.
The word begun is exact. Forty years of plagues, sea, manna, fire and two conquered kingdoms are described as an opening. A man who has seen more of God's action than anyone alive says the display has barely started.
Then the request, and it is small: please let me go over and see the good land that is beyond the Jordan, that fine mountain, and Lebanon Deuteronomy 3:25.
He does not ask to lead the conquest, to enter as commander, or to have his sentence lifted. He asks to cross and look. After forty years of walking toward it, he wants to see the place before he dies.
The refusal is immediate and it is sharp: Yahweh was angry with me because of you, and didn't listen to me. Yahweh said to me, 'That is enough! Speak no more to me of this matter' Deuteronomy 3:26.
The subject is closed. Not explained, not softened, and not open to a second application. This is the same God who elsewhere invites persistence, and here he shuts a conversation down in six words — which is worth holding beside every general assurance about prayer. A no can be final, and the one receiving it can be the man who talked God out of destroying the nation twice.
Moses says the refusal is because of you, as he did in the first chapter Deuteronomy 1:37. He does not use it to excuse himself, and he tells the story to the people it implicates without any visible bitterness toward them.
What he is given instead comes in the next two verses, and both are consolations of a sort. Go up to the top of Pisgah, and lift up your eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and see with your eyes Deuteronomy 3:27. He will see it after all — all of it, from above, which is more than anyone crossing the river will see.
And then the work: commission Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him; for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which you shall see Deuteronomy 3:28.
The man refused the thing is given the job of preparing the man who will have it. That instruction is carried out for the rest of the book, in public, without a recorded complaint.
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