Deuteronomy 1 Bible study: As a man carries his son

The chapter opens with a distance and a date. "It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea" (1:2). Yet Moses speaks "In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month" (1:3). Numbers dates the setting out from the wilderness of Sinai "In the second year, in the second month" (Numbers 10:11; the setting out is 10:12). This chapter tells what happened at Kadesh Barnea: "you wouldn’t go up" (1:26), and the LORD swore, "Surely not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land" (1:35). The next chapter gives the count: from Kadesh Barnea to the brook Zered "were thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war were consumed from the middle of the camp" (2:14). Moses speaks "after he had struck Sihon the king of the Amorites who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan" (1:4), the victories Numbers 21 tells (Numbers 21:21-35).

Deuteronomy 1:16→leads toJohn 7:24

Moses charged Israel's judges, "judge righteously between a man and his brother" (1:16), and "You shall not show partiality in judgment" (1:17). Teaching in the temple (John 7:14), Jesus told the crowd, "Don’t judge according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24). Jesus doesn't cite Deuteronomy 1, and the New Testament doesn't link his words to this chapter, so this is a reading. Some hear in Jesus' words the charge Moses gave: judge what is right, not by the face of the person in front of you (1:16-17). Others note that Jesus was speaking of how the crowd judged his healing a man on the Sabbath (John 7:23), and read the two as sharing a theme without one pointing to the other.

נָשָׂאnasa'say na-SA

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "lift, carry, take". Strong's: "to lift, in a great variety of applications". The chapter uses it four times, in two places. Moses says, "I am not able to bear you myself alone" (1:9), and "How can I myself alone bear your problems, your burdens, and your strife?" (1:12). Then he tells them what they saw in the wilderness: "the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son" (1:31), where carried and carries are both this verb. In Numbers, Moses had asked whether the LORD had told him, "Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing infant" (Numbers 11:12), with the same verb twice.