In the book of Deuteronomy Moses preaches his final sermons to the people of Israel at the end of the fortieth year of the Exodus. Commentator Daniel I. Block calls this book "the gospel according to Moses." It is a book often quoted by both Jesus and Paul.
Deuteronomy belongs to a couple of different genres. It is a farewell address, with Chapter 33 paralleling Jacob's blessings to his children in Genesis 49. Jesus' upper room discourse (John 13-16) is a New Testament farewell address.
Deuteronomy is also a document of covenant renewal, with a structure similar to ancient Hittite suzerain-vassal treaties. At the end of the 40 years in the wilderness, it is time for the children of the Exodus generation to embrace the covenant for themselves. The members of the new generation were either young children, or not yet born, when the covenant was ratiifed at Mt Sinai.
In addressing this generation of Israelites, Moses highlights a few key lessons from the first 39 years of the nation's journey. First he recalls when they left Mt Horeb (a.k.a. Mt Sinai) in the second month of the second year of the Exodus. At that point God charged them to go and conquer the Promised Land, whose borders had the potential to extend all the way from the Nile to the Euphrates as they carried out their mission to bless all nations (vv 6-8).
By that point they had grown from an extended family to a small nation, too big for Moses to govern on his own (see Ex 18; Num 11), as God carried out his promise to give Abraham many descendants. Moses needed a group of godly assistants to serve as judges under him then, and the same thing would be true in the Promised Land.
The Israelites were just a few weeks' journey from their destination when they left Mt Horeb, and Moses had encouraged them to take courage and carry out their mission (vv 19-21). At that point Moses was asked to send a group of men to scout out the land (v 22). Such a strategy certainly was not necessary, but it had the potential to get the Israelites excited about the land they would be invading. (For more discussion, see my post on Numbers 13.)
The fact-finding trip ended up revealing that the Israelites were not ready to conquer the land. Instead they would remain in the wilderness for another 38 years, until all who had been counted in the military census of Numbers 1, except Joshua and Caleb, had died (Num 14:29).
This episode in Israel's history continued to haunt Moses 40 years later. The sequence of events begun by Israel's rebellion eventually led to Moses himself losing a chance to enter the Promised Land (Deut 1:37).
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