The opening verses of Sefer Devarim contain a detail that seems almost incidental:

אחד עשר יום מחורב דרך הר שעיר עד קדש ברנע It is eleven days from Horeb, by way of Mount Seir, to Kadesh Barnea. Devarim 1:2

Rashi notes the painful irony hidden within those words. The journey from Sinai to the threshold of the Promised Land should have taken eleven days. Instead, it took forty years.

The nation stood at Kadesh Barnea with the Land already in sight. Behind them lay Egypt, the splitting of the sea, Sinai, and the miracles of the wilderness. Ahead of them lay the fulfilment of a promise that stretched back to Avraham. Yet at the very moment they were called upon to enter, they hesitated.

The spies saw fortified cities and powerful nations. Yehoshua and Kalev saw the very same hills, valleys and vineyards. The difference was not what they saw, but what they believed those things represented.

The Ramban notes that the command to inherit the Land and dwell within it forms part of a single mitzvah. First comes possession. Then comes settlement. First the Land must be acquired. Then a society........

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