40 years....

Looking at Deutoronomy in bible study at the moment and i engaged in an interesting discussion about the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. To me the actual physical presence in the wilderness is not a punishment, and a place that I'm sure it would be common for nomad tribes to inhabit. I think that the time was required for the Israelites to put all their faith in God. They failed to enter the promised land the first time round because the journey did not appear to them to be an easy one, a land already occupied and although they agreed it was a land of plenty, it didn't come for freee as such and required faith in God to help them settle in an occupied land.