Numbers 14:39

"And Moses told these words unto all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly. And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up to the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we are here, and will go up unto the place which Jehovah hath promised: for we have sinned. And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of Jehovah, seeing it shall not prosper? Go not up, for Jehovah is not among you; that ye be not smitten down before your enemies. For there the Amalekite and the Canaanite are before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned back from following Jehovah, therefore Jehovah will not be with you. But they presumed to go up to the top of the mountain: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and Moses, departed not out of the camp. Then the Amalekite came down, and the Canaanite who dwelt in that mountain, and smote them and beat them down, even unto Hormah."

This vivid, graphic narrative describes in but a few words the deeds of the presumptuous Israelites who supposed that a mere admission that "we have sinned" (Numbers 14:40) had won for them a complete atonement for their rebellion, and then dared to go against the Word of God and undertake the conquest of Canaan on their own. Of course, the issue was disaster. It could not have been otherwise. The burning words of this paragraph were not explained by Moses in every instance. The mention of the "valley" where the enemy lurked and the "mountain in which they dwelt are the words of an "eye-witness," and the cavil one encounters about this is as presumptuous as that of those ancient Israelites.

Another source of unbelieving criticism derives from the fact that here the ark remained "in the camp." Gray, and others, "locate it outside the camp."[27] And how do they get that "contradiction"? By taking Exodus 33:7, where it is revealed that, for awhile, during the rebellion in the matter of the golden calf, Moses did indeed put the temporary tabernacle outside the camp, to show that God was no longer in the midst of his wicked children, but that was the only exception due to the rebellious state of Israel at the time of its occurrence and affords no excuse whatever for making the Scriptures contradictory!

"Beat them down, even unto Hormah ..." It is useless to attempt a location of Hormah. "Its exact location cannot be ascertained."[28] "The original name of the place was Zephath, a royal city of the Canaanites on the south border of the Holy Land."[29] The circumstances that led to the change of its name to Hormah are given in Numbers 21:1-3. The name has the meaning of "the ban place,"[30] coming from a root that means "total destruction."[31] It was given because of the slaughter of a vast number of Israelites there. The word is used proleptically both here and in Joshua 19:4, for it was so named only after Israel conquered the place and renamed it.[32] This indicates that we have here another passage in which certain facts were added to the Pentateuch by Joshua, who was also inspired and who did so under the direct commandment of the Lord.