When Israel was delivered from slavery in Egypt, God did it with great miraculous signs of His power. God led them through the Sea and on to Mt. Sinai. There he spoke to them, giving His law and ordinances, and then led them up towards the promised land. After scouting out the land, Israel refused to go into the land because it had giants in it.
This so displeased God that he declared that none of the fighting men of that generation would enter the land. They wandered in the wilderness for forty years waiting for those men to die.
Numbers 14:21-23,29-30 Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth, not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times – not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it…. In this desert your bodies will fall – every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me.
The book of Numbers details the time in the wilderness up to the time Israel is ready to enter the land, and God has Moses give a good-by message. He will not enter the land, and he has something to say. That is recorded in Deuteronomy. He begins with a history of how they got there. He confirms the completion of God’s oath.
Deuteronomy 2:14 Thirty eight years passed from the time we left Kadesh Barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley. By then, that entire generation of fighting men had perished from the camp, as the LORD had sworn to them.
He completes the history lesson in chapter 3, and launches a riot-act-laced disertation on how they should act in the land.
Deuteronomy 4:1-2 Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you.
4:3 You saw with your own eyes what the LORD did at Baal Peor… That’s recent.
4:1-10 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb… That’s 38 years ago.
4:34 Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstreached arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
And there it is. This goes back 40+ years, and all the men who were 20 years old or more are dead. It is the little old ladies who saw all that. This gets pounded in as the dissertation continues.
6:20-23 In the future, when you son askes you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?” tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous sighs and wonders – great and terrible-upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. But he brought us out from there…
7:18-19 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the LORD brought you out.
11:1-7 Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the LORD brought lasting ruin on them. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the desert until you arrived in this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the LORD has done.
29:16 You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt…
The was the men who rejected God’s instructions to go up into the land, and they are all now dead. It is to the surviving widows to teach the next generations. That’s a high honor, and it’s given to the women, not to the men. So it turns out that it is a priviledge to be one of God’s little old ladies.