Numbers 14:29–45

^29*You will die and your corpses will be scattered across this wilderness. Because you have complained against me, none of you over twenty years of age will enter that land. ³⁰I promised to let you live there, but not one of you will, except Caleb and Joshua. ³¹You said that your children would be captured, but I will bring them into the land that you rejected, and it will be their home. ³²You will die here in this wilderness. ^33*Your children will wander in the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last one of you dies. ³⁴You will suffer the consequences of your sin for forty years, one year for each of the forty days you spent exploring the land. You will know what it means to have me against you! ³⁵I swear that I will do this to you wicked people who have gathered together against me. Here in the wilderness every one of you will die. I, the Lord, have spoken.’ ”

^36–37The men Moses had sent to explore the land brought back a false report which caused the people to complain against the Lord. And so the Lord struck them with a disease, and they died. ³⁸Of the twelve spies only Joshua and Caleb survived.

The First Attempt to Invade the Land

³⁹When Moses told the Israelites what the Lord had said, they mourned bitterly. ⁴⁰Early the next morning they started out to invade the hill country, saying, “Now we are ready to go to the place which the Lord told us about. We admit that we have sinned.”

⁴¹But Moses said, “Then why are you disobeying the Lord now? You will not succeed! ⁴²Don’t go. The Lord is not with you, and your enemies will defeat you. ⁴³When you face the Amalekites and the Canaanites, you will die in battle; the Lord will not be with you, because you have refused to follow him.”

⁴⁴Yet they still dared to go up into the hill country, even though neither the Lord’s Covenant Box nor Moses left the camp. ⁴⁵Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived there attacked and defeated them, and pursued them as far as Hormah.