But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me to show My holiness in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”
12. And the Lord spoke unto Moses and Aaron. God here both sets forth their crime, and pronounces its punishment. Now, whilst unbelief is in itself a gross and detestable evil, God aggravates its guilt by declaring its consequence, viz., that He was defrauded of His glory, when Moses and Aaron, who ought to have been the proclaimers of the miracle, lay as it were confounded with shame.
After thirty-eight years' tedious marches, or rather tedious rests, in the wilderness, backward towards the Red Sea, the armies of Israel now at length set their faces towards Canaan again, and had come not far off from the place where they were when, by the righteous sentence of divine Justice, they were made to begin their wanderings.
Commenting on Numbers 20:1-13
This is the water of Meribah,.... Or "strife": this is the name by which the water had in this place, and from this rock, was called; and which is the same name given to the place at Horeb, where a rock had been smitten, and water had flowed, as now, the first year they came out of Egypt; and to distinguish this from that, this...