A Reminder of Wasted Opportunity: The journey from Horeb (Mt. Sinai) to the oasis of Kadesh Barnea takes about eleven days (v. 2). But when the newly freed Israelites got there, they lacked the nerve to possess the promised land, and thus had to wait for thirty-eight years in the wilderness. The events (cf. Num. 13–14) are recalled here in order to challenge the new generation to not fail again. One wasted generation was enough. It is an interesting feature of Deuteronomy, however, that the succeeding generations of Israel are treated as if they were the actors in that earlier drama. All of you came to me . . . (vv. 22ff.). Conversely, the covenant relationship that had been established at Sinai i…