And the Lord spake unto Moses. The end and design of God in willing that these nations should be expelled, I have elsewhere explained, [1] viz, lest they should adulterate the pure worship of God by their admixtures, should corrupt the people by their bad examples, and thus be pollutions to the Holy Land. But Moses now refers to another point, for, when about to speak of the division of the land, he begins by saying that it must be emptied of its inhabitants, that its free and full enjoyment may remain for the children of Israel. We must remark the connection here, for else this passage would have been a supplement of the First Commandment, to which I have indeed appended the latter part of the verse: but, since God declares connectedly, "Ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein, for I have given you the land to possess it," it would have been absurd that one clause should be disjoined from the other.

Footnotes

1 - See ante, [35]vol. 2: p. 397, etc.

The expulsion of the Canaanites and the destruction of their monuments of idolatry had been already enjoined (see the marginal references); and Numbers 33:54 is substantially a repetition from Exodus. 26:53-55. But the solemn warning of Numbers 33:55-56 is new. A call for it had been furnished by their past transgressions in the matter of Baal-peor, and by their imperfect fulfillment, at the first, of Moses' orders in the Midianite war.

And the Lord spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan, near Jericho,.... See Gill on Numbers 33:48; see Gill on Numbers 22:1,
saying; as follows.

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 bosoms. 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.

ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you--not, however, by expulsion, but extermination (Deuteronomy 7:1).
and destroy all their pictures--obelisks for idolatrous worship (see on Leviticus 26:1).
and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places--by metonymy for all their groves and altars, and materials of worship on the tops of hills.

These instructions, with which the eyes of the Israelites were directed to the end of all their wandering, viz., the possession of the promised land, are arranged in two sections by longer introductory formulas (Numbers 33:50 and Numbers 35:1). The former contains the divine commands (a) with regard to the extermination of the Canaanites and their idolatry, and the division of the land among the tribes of Israel (Numbers 33:50-56); (b) concerning the boundaries of Canaan (Numbers 34:1-15); (c) concerning the men who were to divide the land (Numbers 34:16-29). The second contains commands (a) respecting the towns to be given up to the Levites (Numbers 35:1-8); (b) as to the setting apart of cities of refuge for unintentional manslayers, and the course to be adopted in relation to such manslayers (Numbers 35:9-34); and (c) a law concerning the marrying of heiresses within their own tribes (Numbers 36:1-13). - The careful dovetailing of all these legal regulations by separate introductory formulas, is a distinct proof that the section Numbers 33:50-56 is not to be regarded, as Baumgarten, Knobel, and others suppose, in accordance with the traditional division of the chapters, as an appendix or admonitory conclusion to the list of stations, but as the general legal foundation for the more minute instructions in Numbers 34-36.