In order fully to understand the foregoing commandment, we must look at it in connection with a passage in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses, in going over the facts of Israel’s marvelous history in the wilderness, reminds them of the following important and interesting circumstance: “And when we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great and terrible wilderness, which ye saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us; and we came to Kadesh-barnea. And I said unto you, ‘Ye are come unto the mountain of the Amorites, which the Lord our God doth give unto us. Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee; go up and possess it, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged.’ _And ye came near unto me every one of you_, and said, ‘_We will send men before us_, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.’” (Deut. i. 19-22.) Now here we have the moral root of the fact stated in Numbers xiii. 2. It is evident that the Lord gave the commandment concerning the spies because of the moral condition of the people. Had they been governed by simple faith, they would have acted on those soul-stirring words of Moses, “Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee: _go up and possess it_, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; _fear not, neither be discouraged_.” There is not a single syllable about spies in this splendid passage. What does faith want of spies, when it has the word and the presence of the living God? If Jehovah had given them a land, it must be worth having. And had He not? Yes, truly; and not only so, but He had borne testimony to the nature and character of that land in the following glowing words: “For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of oil olive and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” (Deut. viii. 7-9.) Should not all this have sufficed for Israel? Ought they not to have been satisfied with the testimony of God? Had not He spied out the land for them, and told them all about it? and was not this enough? What need of sending men to spy the land? Did not God know all about it? Was there a spot “from Dan to Beersheba” with which He was not perfectly acquainted? Had He not selected this land and allotted it, in His own eternal counsels, for the seed of Abraham His friend? Did He not know all about the difficulties? and was He not able to surmount them? Why, then, did they “come near _every one of them_, and say, ‘We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again’”?