Deuteronomy 1:19-33

Common English Bible

The spy disaster

¹⁹ We left Horeb and journeyed through that vast and terrifying desert you saw, on the way to the hills of the Amorites, exactly as the Lord our God commanded us. Then we arrived at Kadesh-barnea. ²⁰ I said to you: You have come to the hills of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving to us. ²¹ Look! The Lord your God has laid out the land before you. Go up and take it, just as the Lord, your ancestors’ God, has promised you. Don’t be afraid! Don’t be frightened!

²² Then all of you approached me, saying, “Let’s send spies ahead of us—they can check out the land for us. Then they can return with word about the route we should use and bring a report about the cities that we’ll be entering.”

²³ This idea seemed good to me, so I selected twelve men, one from each tribe. ²⁴ These set out and went up into the hills, going as far as the Cluster^[a] ravine. They walked all around that area. ²⁵ They took some of the land’s fruit and then came back down to us. They reported to us: “The land that the Lord our God is giving to us is wonderful!” ²⁶ But you weren’t willing to go up. You rejected the Lord your God’s instruction. ²⁷ You complained in your tents, saying things like, “The Lord hates us! That’s why he brought us out of Egypt—to hand us over to the Amorites, to destroy us! ²⁸ What are we doing? Our brothers have made our hearts sick by saying, ‘People far stronger and much taller than we live there, and the cities are huge, with walls sky-high! Worse still, we saw the descendants of the Anakites there!’”

²⁹ But I said to you: Don’t be terrified! Don’t be afraid of them! ³⁰ The Lord your God is going before you. He will fight for you just as he fought for you in Egypt while you watched, ³¹ and as you saw him do in the desert. Throughout your entire journey, until you reached this very place, the Lord your God has carried you just as a parent carries a child.

³² But you had no faith in the Lord your God about this matter, ³³ even though he went ahead of you, scouting places where you should camp, in fire by night, so you could see the road you were taking, and in cloud during the daytime.