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the whole community raised their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. 2 All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole community said to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this wilderness! 3 Why is the Lord bringing us to this land to have us fall by the sword? Our wives and our children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt? 4 And they said to one another, “We should choose another leader and go back to Egypt.”
5 Then Moses and Aaron fell facedown in front of the whole Israelite community gathered there. 6 Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had explored the land, tore their clothes 7 and said to the whole Israelite community, “The land that we passed through and explored is an exceedingly good land. 8 If the Lord is pleased with us, He will bring us into this land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and give it to us. 9 Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not be afraid of the people of the land, for we will devour them like bread. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.”
10 But the whole community talked about stoning them.
Then the glory of the Lord appeared to all the Israelites at the Tent of Meeting. 11 The Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people treat Me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in Me, despite all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? 12 I will strike them down with a plague and disinherit them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they.”
13 But Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it, for by Your power You brought this people up from among them. 14 Then they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that You, O Lord, are among this people, and that You, O Lord, are seen face to face; that Your cloud stays over them, and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. 15 If You kill this people at one time, then to the nations who have heard of Your fame will declare, 16 ‘The Lord was not able to bring this people into the land He swore to give them, so He slaughtered them in the wilderness’.
17 “So now, I ask, let the power of my Lord be great, just as You have declared: 18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and forgiving sin and rebellion. But He does not leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation’. 19 Please forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your faithful love, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
20 The Lord replied, “I do forgive them, as you have asked. 21 Yet as surely as I live and as surely as the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, 22 none of the men who have seen My glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tested Me these ten times and did not obey Me, 23 will ever see the land I swore on oath to give their forefathers. No one who has despised Me will ever see it. 24 But because My servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows Me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. 25 Since the Amalekites and Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out for the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea.”
26 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 27 “How long will this wicked community keep grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints that the Israelites make against Me. 28 So tell them: ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, as you have spoken in My hearing, so will I do to you: 29 Your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness—all of you who were registered in the census, twenty years old or more, who have grumbled against Me. 30 For you will certainly not enter the land I promised to settle you in, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 31 But your children that you said would become plunder, I will bring in to the land you have rejected, and they will enjoy it. 32 But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness. 33 Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your own unfaithfulness, until the last of your dead bodies lies scattered in the wilderness. 34 According to the number of days that you that explored the land, forty days, for every day you will bear your guilt a year. So for forty years you will suffer My displeasure against you’. 35 I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will certainly do all these thing to this whole wicked community, which has banded together and conspired against Me. They will meet their end in this wilderness, and there they will die’.”
36 So the men Moses sent to explore the land, and who returned and made the whole community grumble against him by spreading a bad report about the land— 37 those same men who were responsible for spreading the bad report about the land—were stuck down by a plague and died before the Lord. 38 Only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh remained alive out of those men who went to explore the land.
