What Does Moses Mean in the Bible Read through 3 lenses

At the edge of the hill country, the people who had just refused to climb change their minds. They admit they were wrong, strap on their swords, and start up the slope, saying this is the very thing they were told to do. But a command belongs to the hour it was spoken in. God's word comes fresh in every moment and never repeats itself, so what was an open door yesterday can be a wall today. The servant is the son of his moment: he lives by what is being asked of him now. Obeying an old order out of its time is not obedience. It is the self choosing which moment it would rather be in.

• Moses is told to warn them: do not go up, do not fight, because God is not among them. He is with everything that exists, nearer than their own breath, holding them in His knowledge, and that nearness never leaves anyone. But there is a second kind of withness, the withness of help and favour, and that one He gives and withholds as He wills. They hear the warning and go anyway, which shows their sorrow was not a turning toward Him but a plan to repair their own record with their own hands. Strength the self picks up stays the self's, and carries all of the self's weakness into the fight.

The Amorites pour out of the hills and chase them like bees, beating them down the long road. Even the bee is taught directly by its Lord and moves only as it is moved, so the swarm is obedient while the armed men are not. They come back and weep, and the weeping gets no answer. Every call is heard, yet the answer has its own hour, and to ask while refusing to be placed is only asking for your own choice back. So they sit a long while at Kadesh, the holy place, with nothing happening, held exactly where He set them.