Moses knew the Lord promised them Canaan, but forgot He also promised to lead them there.
Numbers 10:11-12 give a summary of the first leg of Israel’s journey from Sinai until “the cloud settled down in the Wilderness of Paran.” This was “a journey of three days” (v 33), and so there were two night resting places (see 11:35) before they encamped in Paran, a region that Moses would later refer to as “that great and terrible wilderness” (Deut 1:19), an area extending from the south end of the Dead Sea down to Midian, the region where Moses found his wife and shepherded for forty years. So we read, “Moses said to Hobab the son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law, ‘We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, “I will give it to you.” Come with us, and we will treat you well; for the Lord has promised good things to Israel’” (Num 10:29). The word translated father-in-law can refer to anyone related by marriage. Probably Reuel (or Raguel) was Moses’ father-in-law and Jethro and Hobab were brothers-in-law. In any case, when Hobab says he’d rather return to Midian, Moses tries to sweeten the offer. “Please do not leave, inasmuch as you know how we are to camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes” (v 31). What? Have you forgotten the Pillar who leads you? Here is the Lord’s gentle rebuke: “So they departed…on a journey of three days; and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them…to search out a resting place for them” (v 33). Wasn’t the ark supposed to travel in the middle? Not now! God wouldn’t have any Midianite interloper getting in between. In Jeremiah’s day, the Lord puts it more bluntly: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord” (Jer 17:5). We can’t afford even a hairsbreadth between our souls and the Lord!