How did Moses get them out of the wildnerness?

Answer 1

The Israelites weren't "lost" in the wilderness. They had 40 years of punishment to endure by "wandering and languishing away in the wilderness" for forty years for their fear to enter into the Promised Land forty years earlier and their failure to obey God's voice and command to enter therein.

The forty years of wandering was established by the number of "days" it took the Israeli spies to go in and assess the lay of the land (the Promised Land)... twenty days in and twenty days to return. All but two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, gave a bad report of their findings, and a faithless and fearful dread came over the Israelites, and they balked when it came time to enter in.

Caleb and Joshua urged the people to do as God commanded... and to trust that He would make things turn out fine. But the people's fear froze their blood... and their advance.

Their faithlessness in God's Word resulted in the establishment of His "year-for-a-day" punishment principle in which they would wander in the wilderness one year for each day the spies were gone - which happened to be forty.

During this time, that faithless elder generation died out from among the people (except Caleb and Joshua)... and their children were led into the Promised Land forty years later by these two men whose faith was in the God of Israel.

Toward the end of the wandering, God took Moses to a high place across the river from the Promised Land to let him see it before he died:

"...This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab (Iraq), according to the Word of the Lord. And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulcre unto this day." (Deut.34:4-6)

Moses didn't get the Israelites out of the wilderness. Besides his death... there was nothing to "get out of." It was just a matter of forty years of wandering and moving camp every so often. And when the punishment time was expired... they merely crossed the river into the Promised Land. In their movements, they may have camped near the Jordan River any number of times... looked across the river... and saw the object of their punishment - the land of milk and honey where they had feared to go.

(Numbers 13 &14)