Numbers 33

“But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those who remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live.”

For the last forty years, the Israelites have been wondering in the desert by themselves with no outside influences. This total separation from all other people kept them away from the temptation to idolatry. When the Israelites cross the Jordan into Canaan, this would change, so God warms them with the above words.

In doing some additional reading, I found these words from Matthew Henry’s commentary on the above verse:

Now that they were to pass over Jordan, they were entering again into temptation to follow idols; and they are threatened that, if they spared either the idols or the idolaters, their sin would certainly be their punishment. They would foster vipers in their own bosom. The remnant of the Canaanites, if they made any peace with them, though but for a time, would be pricks in their eyes, and thorns in their sides. We must expect trouble and affliction from whatever sin we indulge; that which we are willing should tempt us, will vex us. It was intended that the Canaanites should be put out of the land; but if the Israelites learned their wicked ways, they also would be put out. Let us hear this and fear. If we do not drive out sin, sin will drive us out. If we are not the death of our lusts, our lusts will be the death of our souls.