Numbers 14:11–38

GOD’S JUDGMENT OF ISRAEL’S REBELLION

¹¹The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people despise me? How long will they not trust in me despite all the signs I have performed among them?^{r 12}I will strike them with a plague and destroy them. Then I will make you into a greater and mightier nation than they are.”^s

¹³But Moses replied to the Lord, “The Egyptians will hear about it, for by your strength you brought up this people from them. ¹⁴They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land.^t They have heard that you, Lord, are among these people, how you, Lord, are seen face to face, how your cloud stands over them, and how you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.^{u 15}If you kill this people with a single blow,^Av the nations that have heard of your fame^w will declare, ¹⁶‘Since the Lord wasn’t able to bring this people into the land he swore to give them,^x he has slaughtered them in the wilderness.’^y

¹⁷“So now, may my Lord’s power be magnified just as you have spoken: ¹⁸The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love,^z forgiving iniquity and rebellion.^aa But he will not leave the guilty unpunished,^ab bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children to the third and fourth generation.^{ac 19}Please pardon the iniquity of this people, in keeping with the greatness of your faithful love,^ad just as you have forgiven them from Egypt until now.”

²⁰The Lord responded, “I have pardoned them as you requested. ²¹Yet as I live and as the whole earth is filled with the Lord’s glory,^{ae 22}none of the men who have seen my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tested me these ten times and did not obey me, ²³will ever see the land I swore to give their ancestors.^a None of those who have despised me^b will see it. ²⁴But since my servant Caleb has a different spirit and has remained loyal to me, I will bring him into the land where he has gone, and his descendants will inherit it.^{c 25}Since the Amalekites and Canaanites are living in the lowlands,^B turn back tomorrow and head for the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea.”^d

²⁶Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: ²⁷“How long must I endure this evil community that keeps complaining about me? I have heard the Israelites’ complaints that they make against me.^{e 28}Tell them: As I live—this is the Lord’s declaration—I will do to you exactly as I heard you say. ²⁹Your corpses will fall in this wilderness—all of you who were registered in the census, the entire number of you twenty years old or more^f—because you have complained about me. ³⁰I swear that none of you will enter the land I promised^A to settle you in, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. ³¹I will bring your children whom you said would become plunder^g into the land you rejected, and they will enjoy it.^{h 32}But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. ³³Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years and bear the penalty for your acts of unfaithfulness until all your corpses lie scattered in the wilderness. ³⁴You will bear the consequences of your iniquities forty years based on the number of the forty days that you scouted the land, a year for each day.^Bi You will know my displeasure.^{C 35}I, the Lord, have spoken. I swear that I will do this to the entire evil community that has conspired against me.^j They will come to an end in the wilderness, and there they will die.”^k

³⁶So the men Moses sent to scout out the land, and who returned and incited the entire community to complain about him by spreading a negative report about the land—³⁷those men who spread the negative report about the land were struck down by the Lord. ³⁸Only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh remained alive of those men who went to scout out the land.