Moses climbed Mount Nebo and looked across the Jordan Valley at the land God had promised Israel for generations. He could see it. Close enough to count the trees. Close enough to smell the river. But God told him something that still unsettles readers of the Bible today:

“You may see the land with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” —Deuteronomy 34

Most of us have heard this story our whole lives and walked away feeling sorry for Moses. After forty years in the wilderness—after the burning bush, the plagues, the Red Sea, and the daily miracle of manna—he doesn’t get to enter the Promised Land.

But what if we’ve been reading the story wrong?

What if the wilderness was never the waiting room? What if the years of manna, the daily reaching of the hand, and the face-to-face conversations with God in the desert wer ...