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| PentecostalTheology.com
In Deuteronomy 3:25 (ESV) Moses requests to see the promised land:
Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.
In Deuteronomy 3:27 (ESV) God offers Moses what appears to be a consolation prize,
Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan.
Moses is allowed to see the land, but from afar.
According to Numbers 21:20 and 23:14, and Deuteronomy 34:1–4, the Pisgah is in Moabite country, well south of the Gilad.
If Moses’s vantage point is east of the Jordan river, then to the north he could see in the direction of the Gilad, the Bashan, the Lebanon and the Euphrates. To the west he could see in the direction of Palestine proper and the Mediterranean coast.
If we consider south west to be equivalent to the “west” in this verse, then Moses could see in the direction of the Negev.
However, no portion of the promised land would be to Moses’s east, or truly to his south. So why is Moses commanded to look eastward and southward?
