Pillars of Cloud and Fire

¹⁷ When Pharaoh let the people go, God did ^(A)not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people ^(B)change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.”

¹⁷ They refused to obey ^(A)and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt.^[a] But you are a God ready to forgive, ^(B)gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.

¹¹ They ^(A)said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Is not this what ^(B)we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

The People Rebel

14 Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people ^(A)wept that night. ² And all the people of Israel ^(B)grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or ^(C)would that we had died in this wilderness! ³ Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? ^(D)Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” ⁴ And they said to one another, ^(E)“Let us choose a leader and ^(F)go back to Egypt.”

⁴⁷ yet ^(A)if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors, saying, ^(B)‘We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’

³⁹ Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and ^(A)in their hearts they turned to Egypt,

^27 (A)Whoever does not ^(B)bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. ²⁸ For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not ^(C)first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? ²⁹ Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, ³⁰ saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ ³¹ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not ^(D)sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³² And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

³⁸ But Paul thought best not to take with them one ^(A)who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

⁸ And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, ^(A)‘Is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own.’