Deuteronomy 32 Summary and Study Guide

God told Moses that Israel would turn away from him after his death. Then he told him to set that warning to music and teach the children to sing it. This Deuteronomy 32 summary and study guide follows the Song of Moses from that command to the mountain where Moses died.

Setting the Stage

Forty years earlier God had brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt and promised them a land of their own. The people who left Egypt refused to enter it, so they died in the desert, and the promise passed to their children.

Those children are now camped east of the Jordan River, looking across at the land. Moses is 120 years old and God has already told him he will not cross with them. In the chapter just before this one, God tells Moses something else: after Moses dies, this new generation will break their agreement with God as their parents did. So God gives him one last assignment before the end.

Comprehensive Deuteronomy 32 Summary

Moses calls heaven and earth to listen, because what he is about to say will outlast every person hearing it. He praises God first, before he accuses anyone: God is the Rock, his work is perfect, his ways are just. Then he turns on the nation. They have corrupted themselves, and they have repaid their Father with foolishness.

He tells them to remember. God chose them before they existed, setting the boundaries of the nations with Israel in view. He found them helpless in the desert, guarded them like the pupil of an eye, and carried them the way an eagle carries its young. Then he set them down in a land so full of good things that even the rocks gave honey and oil.

That is where the song turns. Israel grew fat on the gift and kicked at the Giver. They forgot the Rock who fathered them and sacrificed instead to demons and to gods nobody had heard of before.

God answers in kind: they chose what was no god, so he will choose what is no people. Fire, famine, plague, wild animals and the sword follow.

He stops short of wiping them out, and he says why. If Israel vanished, their enemies would credit themselves rather than God. So the reckoning is sealed up instead of spent, and vengeance stays in God’s hands.

When Israel’s strength is finally gone, God turns. He asks where the gods they fed have gone, declares that he alone kills and makes alive, swears by his own life, and calls the nations to rejoice with his people.

Moses and Joshua then speak the whole song to Israel, and Moses tells them these words are their life. That same day God sends him up Mount Nebo to see the land and die there.

One Word Summary

• Witness: the song’s own stated job (31:19).
• Ingratitude: the chapter’s charge, that Israel repaid a Father who gave them everything.
• Rock: the name Moses uses for God five times, holding the whole song together.
• Restraint: God stops the judgment he had every right to finish.

In One Sentence

Moses teaches Israel a song that praises God as their faithful Rock, warns them that plenty will turn them to other gods, and names both the judgment that will follow and the mercy that will end it, after which God orders Moses to climb Nebo and die within sight of Canaan.

Theme of Deuteronomy 32

Deuteronomy 32 is about the faithfulness of God set against the forgetfulness of a people who have everything they need. God does not change, and that is the fixed point the whole song is measured by. Running alongside that are three connected ideas: comfort can be more dangerous to faith than hardship, God’s judgment on his own people is measured rather than unlimited, and the mercy at the end of the song reaches past Israel to the nations.

Deuteronomy 32 Outline

• Deuteronomy 32:1-3: Moses summons heaven and earth to listen and names his subject as the name of the LORD.
• Deuteronomy 32:4-6: He praises God as the perfect Rock, then charges Israel with corruption and asks whether this is how they repay their Father.
• Deuteronomy 32:7-9: He tells them to ask their fathers and elders how God divided the nations with Israel already in view.
• Deuteronomy 32:10-14: God finds Israel in the desert, guards and carries them, then settles them in a land of honey, oil, milk, meat and wine.
• Deuteronomy 32:15-18: Jeshurun grows fat and kicks, abandoning the Rock for new gods and sacrificing to demons.
• Deuteronomy 32:19-21: God rejects them and announces that he will answer a no-god with a no-people.
• Deuteronomy 32:22-25: He lists the judgment: fire, famine, plague, wild animals, serpents and the sword.
• Deuteronomy 32:26-27: He holds back from erasing them, so their enemies cannot claim the credit.
• Deuteronomy 32:28-33: Israel is called a nation without counsel, whose defeat came from their own poisoned fruit rather than from a stronger god.
• Deuteronomy 32:34-35: The reckoning is sealed up in God’s treasury, and vengeance belongs to him.
• Deuteronomy 32:36-38: God turns to judge for his people and asks where the gods they fed have gone.
• Deuteronomy 32:39-42: He declares that he alone kills and makes alive, and swears by his own life to repay his enemies.
• Deuteronomy 32:43: He calls the nations to rejoice with his people because he will avenge his servants and be merciful to his land.
• Deuteronomy 32:44-47: Moses and Joshua speak the song to Israel, and Moses tells them these words are their life.
• Deuteronomy 32:48-52: God sends Moses up Mount Nebo to see Canaan and die there, because he failed to honour God at the waters of Meribah.

The Song of Moses

Deuteronomy 32:1-43 is a song, and God commanded it. In the chapter before this one he told Moses exactly what it was for:

“Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.”

Deuteronomy 31:19

God tells Moses to write the song down, teach it to the people, and get it into their mouths, so that it stands as evidence when the day comes.

That is a strange command until you ask what survives. A written law can be lost, and Israel lost this one: in Josiah’s reign the high priest Hilkiah announced that he had found the book of the law in the temple, as though it had not been seen for a long time (2 Kings 22:8). A song children learn by heart goes where no scroll goes. God picked the one form the nation could not mislay.

The song opens by calling in the largest witnesses available:

“Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.”

Deuteronomy 32:1

Listen, sky. Listen, earth. Moses wants a court that will still be standing when the people on trial are gone.

It ends where it began, with worship, though the audience has widened. The case opened before heaven and earth, and it closes with the nations of that earth called in to rejoice alongside Israel.

The poem is also different in shape from everything around it. Hebrew scribes set it out in short half lines rather than as running prose, so in a Hebrew Bible this chapter looks different on the page from Deuteronomy 31 and 33. At 52 verses it is one of the longest chapters in the book, and it is one of four songs of Moses in Scripture, with Exodus 15, Psalm 90, and the one in Revelation 15:3 that still carries his name.

Barnes calls the song the summary of all the later Old Testament prophecies and the framework they are laid out on, and Delitzsch went further, saying the song stands to prophecy as the Ten Commandments stand to law and the Lord’s Prayer to prayer. Much of what the prophets would later say to Israel is already here, in a song the children were taught to sing.

Observations from Deuteronomy 32

God Is Called the Rock Five Times (32:4, 15, 18, 30, 31)

Deuteronomy 32:4 appears to be the first place in the Bible where God is called a Rock at all, and from here the name spreads through the Psalms.

The word is used four more times in the chapter for other things, twice for actual rock in verse 13 and twice for the false gods in verses 31 and 37. Verse 31 sets the two side by side: “For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.” Their rock and our Rock are the same word in Hebrew, and Moses says even the enemy can tell the difference.

Several well known sources miscount this. Some say four and leave out verse 4, others say six. Five is what the chapter has.

The Punishment Is Shaped Like the Sin (32:21)

Verse 21 is the longest in the chapter, and it turns Israel’s own action back on them. “They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God… and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people.”

They made God jealous with a no-god, so he will make them jealous with a no-people. The sentence is not random damage; it is the sin handed back in the same shape.

The Same Word Carries the Gift and the Disease (32:14-15)

In verse 14 God gives Israel the fat of lambs and the fat of the kidneys of wheat, meaning the richest and best of everything. One verse later the same idea has turned: “But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness.”

Israel grew heavy and sleek on what God gave, and then kicked at him like a well fed animal that will no longer take the yoke. The blessing and the ruin are described in the same word, which is the whole warning of the chapter in one image.

God Stops the Judgment for His Own Name’s Sake (32:26-27)

God says he was ready to scatter Israel until nobody remembered them, “were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy.” He held back because Israel’s enemies would have misread the ruin and said “Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.”

Matthew Henry points out that this is language used in a human way, since God fears no one. It tells the reader why the nation survived, and the reason was not Israel’s merit. God protected the truth about himself, and Israel lived because of it.

One Chases a Thousand, and the Numbers Run Backwards (32:30)

Verse 30 asks a question with the arithmetic reversed: “How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them?” How could one enemy soldier chase a thousand Israelites, unless God had handed them over.

Those numbers belong to a promise. In Leviticus 26:8 God told an obedient Israel that five of them would chase a hundred and a hundred would chase ten thousand. Here the same numbers run the other way, and Moses says the cause was not a stronger god on the other side. Israel’s own Rock sold them.

Difficult Verses Explained

Why Does My Bible Say “Sons of God” in Deuteronomy 32:8?

Because the ancient manuscripts differ at that point, and translations follow different ones. The traditional Hebrew text reads “according to the number of the children of Israel,” which the KJV, NKJV and NIV follow. The Greek Septuagint reads “angels of God,” and a Dead Sea Scrolls fragment reads “sons of God,” which is why the ESV prints that.

Commentators divide over which is original. Keil and Delitzsch judge the Greek reading a later insertion reflecting a Jewish idea of guardian angels over the nations, while others note it is hard to explain how the Hebrew would have grown out of the Greek. On any reading the verse says the same thing: when God laid out the map of the nations, he already had Israel in view.

Does “Vengeance Is Mine” Mean God Is Vengeful?

It means vengeance is God’s to give and nobody else’s. “To me belongeth vengeance and recompence” (Deuteronomy 32:35) says that repaying wrong belongs to God, and Paul quotes it in Romans 12:19 for exactly that reason, to tell Christians not to avenge themselves.

Read that way the verse is a relief rather than a threat. It takes the weight of settling accounts off the person who was wronged and puts it where it can be carried justly. Hebrews 10:30 quotes the same verse in the other direction, as a warning to anyone who treats Christ lightly.

The second half of the verse, “their foot shall slide in due time,” is the text Jonathan Edwards preached from in 1741 in the sermon known as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Many readers reach this chapter through that sermon. Readers differ over whether the sliding foot in this verse is Israel’s or her enemies’, which is the same question the vine of Sodom raises below, and either way the line sits inside a song that ends in mercy.

What Does “The Lowest Hell” Mean in Deuteronomy 32:22?

The Hebrew word here is sheol, which is the realm of the dead, and “the lowest hell” pictures the deepest place there is. God says his anger “shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase,” meaning the fire of his anger reaches to the deepest place and consumes the earth and everything it grows.

The Pulpit Commentary takes this as a general picture of what God’s anger does, applying to judgment as a whole rather than to one particular disaster on Israel. Building a doctrine of the afterlife from this verse asks it to answer a question it was never addressing.

Were the Idols in Deuteronomy 32:17 Really Demons?

The verse says so plainly: “They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up.” Israel offered sacrifices to demons rather than to God, worshipping gods they had never known and gods that had only recently appeared.

Paul says the same of pagan worship in his own day, writing in 1 Corinthians 10:20 that what the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils. Both men are making one claim: worship goes somewhere, and these sacrifices landed on demons. The Hebrew word used here for these beings appears in only one other place in the Old Testament, Psalm 106:37.

Whose Vine Is the Vine of Sodom in Deuteronomy 32:32?

The text says only “their vine,” and readers have taken it two ways. Keil, Barnes, Ellicott and the Pulpit Commentary all read it of Israel, continuing the previous verse’s explanation of why God sold them to their enemies. Cambridge and Matthew Henry, at least in part, read it of Israel’s enemies instead.

The reading that takes it of Israel has the stronger case, because elsewhere in the Old Testament Sodom is the comparison reached for when Israel’s own corruption is described (see Isaiah 1:10 and Jeremiah 23:14). Either way the picture is the same: a vine that looks like a vine and produces poison. Scripture does not settle which group is meant, and a summary should not pretend otherwise.

What Does “I Kill, and I Make Alive” Mean in Deuteronomy 32:39?

It is God’s claim to have power over life and death that no one else holds. “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.” God is telling a people who had been sacrificing to other gods that he alone gives life, takes it, injures and heals, and that nobody can rescue anyone from him.

In its setting this is about the national life of Israel, which God had handed over to death and would restore. Later Scripture takes the same claim further, into resurrection, but the verse itself is making a point about who God is rather than laying out a doctrine of the afterlife.

Common Misunderstandings

• The song is a witness, not a curse God laid on Israel. God says so himself in Deuteronomy 31:19, and he gave it in advance so that when the trouble came the nation would know whose hand it was and where to turn. Evidence handed over before the trial is a mercy.
• “Jeshurun” is an honourable name, not an insult. It comes from a Hebrew root meaning upright, and Moses uses it at the moment Israel had stopped living up to it. Commentators differ over whether the tone is bitter irony or affection, and the reproach lands either way.
• The violent language shows God restraining himself, not losing his temper. Verses 26 and 27 have him stopping short of a judgment he had every right to complete, and saying why.
• Moses was barred from the land for a named and serious failure. Some readers assume it was something small. Verse 51 gives the reason in the chapter’s own words: “because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel.” Moses failed to honour God as holy in front of the nation he was leading.

Christ Connection

The clearest link is one the New Testament makes by name. In Revelation 15:3 the redeemed stand before God and “sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb,” and the words John records echo this chapter closely: “just and true are thy ways” runs alongside Deuteronomy 32:4, where all God’s ways are judgment and he is just and right, and “all nations shall come and worship before thee” runs alongside the call to the nations in Deuteronomy 32:43.

John does not quote the song word for word, and he names it. A song written as evidence against God’s people ends up being sung by God’s people, and by then it carries the Lamb’s name alongside Moses’.

Four more connections run from this chapter into the New Testament:

• The Rock. Writing about Israel in the wilderness, Paul says “they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4).
• The no-people. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 32:21 in Romans 10:19 to show that Israel had been told in advance that God would turn to the nations. What reads in this chapter as a punishment becomes, in Paul’s hands, the opening through which the gospel reaches everyone else.
• The call to the nations. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 32:43 in Romans 15:10, “Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people,” as proof that God always meant to gather more than Israel.
• Vengeance. Romans 12:19 and Hebrews 10:30 both quote Deuteronomy 32:35, once to stop believers taking revenge and once to warn against treating Christ’s sacrifice lightly.

The song’s last line promises that God “will be merciful unto his land, and to his people,” and the Hebrew word behind that mercy is the word for making atonement. Many Bible teachers see the promise reaching its end at the cross, where God dealt with sin without destroying the sinner, and Colossians 1:20 points that way.

The chapter itself stops at the promise, so this is a reading rather than a quotation. What the chapter does say plainly is that the God who lists this judgment is also the God who ends the song with mercy, and that both belong to the same character described in verse 4.

When, Where, and Why

• When: The fortieth year after Israel left Egypt, in the eleventh month (Deuteronomy 1:3), on the same day God told Moses to climb Mount Nebo. That places it around 1400 BC by the usual reckonings, though the chapter names no year and the dates given for it are reconstructions.
• Where: The plains of Moab, east of the Jordan River and opposite Jericho. Israel is close enough to see the land and has not entered it, which is why a song about losing the land could be sung by people who did not yet own it.
• Why: Deuteronomy has spent thirty-one chapters restating the covenant to a generation that did not stand at Sinai. This chapter is where Moses hands that generation something they can keep after he is gone, and God chose the form himself (Deuteronomy 31:19).

Key Verses

“He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”

Deuteronomy 32:4

God is solid, everything he does is faultless, everything he decides is right, and there is nothing false or crooked in him. Moses says this before he says a word against Israel, so every charge that follows is measured against a God whose own character is not in doubt.

“But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.”

Deuteronomy 32:15

Israel grew well fed and comfortable, and then kicked back at God, walked away from the one who made them, and treated their Saviour as worth little. This is the hinge of the chapter: everything before it is gift, and everything after it is consequence.

“They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.”

Deuteronomy 32:21

They made God jealous by loving something that was not God at all, so he will make them jealous by turning to people who were not even counted as a nation. Paul quotes this verse to explain how the gospel came to everyone outside Israel.

“For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.”

Deuteronomy 32:47

These words are not empty; they are your life, and by keeping them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to take. Moses gives his own reason why the song matters, and he calls it life rather than information.

Key Lessons from Deuteronomy 32

1. God states his own character before he states the charge.
2. Israel forgot God only after he had filled their hands, so a full life can be harder on faith than an empty one (32:15).
3. Forgetting God is something a person does rather than something that happens to them, which is why verse 18 calls Israel unmindful of the Rock that fathered them.
4. When God holds back judgment, it can be for the honour of his own name rather than for anything in us (32:26-27).
5. Vengeance belongs to God, so the wronged believer is released from the work of settling the account rather than left without justice (32:35).
6. Moses obeyed the command that cost him the land, walking up Nebo the same day he was told to die there (32:48-52).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: Lessons from Deuteronomy 32.

Bible Study Questions

1. Moses praises God in verses 3 and 4 before accusing Israel in verse 5. Why do you think he puts them in that order?
2. Verses 10 to 14 list what God did for Israel. Which item on that list would have been hardest for the people to have earned themselves?
3. Verse 15 says Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. What does comfort do to a person’s sense of need for God?
4. In verse 21 God matches the punishment to the sin. What does that tell you about how he judges?
5. Verses 26 and 27 give God’s reason for stopping short of destroying Israel. What does that reason reveal about what God is protecting?
6. Deuteronomy 32:35 says vengeance belongs to God, and Romans 12:19 applies it to Christians. What would change in a situation you are carrying if you took that verse at its word?
7. Revelation 15:3 says the redeemed sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. Why would a song written as a warning end up sung as praise?
8. Moses tells Israel in verse 47 that these words are their life. What would treating Scripture that way look like this week?

Frequently Asked Questions

Deuteronomy 32, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:

3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.

4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

5 They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.

6 Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?

7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

9 For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

10 He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

11 As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:

12 So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.

13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;

14 Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

16 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.

17 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.

18 Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.

19 And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters.

20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.

21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

22 For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

23 I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.

24 They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

25 The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.

26 I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men:

27 Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.

28 For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.

29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!

30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?

31 For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.

32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:

33 Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.

34 Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?

35 To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

36 For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.

37 And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted,

38 Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.

39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.

40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.

41 If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me.

42 I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.

43 Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.

44 And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun.

45 And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel:

46 And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law.

47 For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.

48 And the LORD spake unto Moses that selfsame day, saying,

49 Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession:

50 And die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people:

51 Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel.

52 Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.