1: 41 - Then you replied, "We have sinned against the Lord. We will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us." So every one of you put on his weapons, thinking it easy to go up into the hill country.

Finally realizing the significance of their rebellion, GenA changes her mind about conquering the land. This change of mind opens with a confession; "we have sinned against Yahweh" followed by a resolve that they would "go up and fight." Their resolve is emphatic, and may be more appropriately rendered, "we, and not the next generation, will go up and fight."1 This, of course, already contradicts directly Yahweh's decision just delivered in the last unit that it would be their children, not them, who will inherit the land. This insolent contraposition earned them Moses' acerbic rebuke that they thought that the conquest of the land without Yahweh's presence would be an easy thing (v41b). "Thinking it easy" translates a single Heb. verb, tahinu, that is found only here in the OT. It can mean either "to regard as easy" (the meaning taken up in most English translations) or "to make light of."2 Understood either way, GenA's action amounted to the kind of "shallow confidence . . . [that] forgot the seriousness of their task"3 that so often attends those who, having surrendered to their own self-centred thoughtlessness, suddenly find themselves at the lighted end of desperation.