Deuteronomy 1:6-8
The covenant people must not remain where God has finished one stage of His work, but must move forward in faith toward the inheritance He has pledged and placed before them.
6 “Yahweh our God spoke to us in Horeb, saying, ‘You have lived long enough at this mountain.
7 Turn, and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all the places near there: in the Arabah, in the hill country, in the lowland, in the South, by the seashore, in the land of the Canaanites, and in Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.
8 Behold, I have set the land before you. Go in and possess the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers—to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob—to give to them and to their offspring after them.’ ”
The covenant people must not remain where God has finished one stage of His work, but must move forward in faith toward the inheritance He has pledged and placed before them.
To recall the LORD's command at Horeb that Israel must leave the mountain, move toward the land, and take possession of what He had already sworn to give to the patriarchs and their descendants.
Moses speaks on the plains of Moab east of the Jordan as the second generation stands near the land after the wilderness years. The covenant community of Israel, especially the generation preparing to enter the land after the unbelieving wilderness generation has passed away. The passage stands within the exodus-Sinai stage of redemptive history, after deliverance and covenant instruction but before Israel's actual entry under Joshua. It looks backward to patriarchal promise and forward to land possession.
The LORD Commands and Israel Refuses
Moses opens Israel's covenant-renewal address by rehearsing the journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea, showing that the generation now on the plains of Moab stands under both the mercy of a God who commands them forward and the warning of a generation destroyed by unbelief.