⁴ Joshua had to circumcise them because all the men who were old enough to fight in battle when they left Egypt had died in the wilderness.

⁵ Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

¹⁶ “When all the men of fighting age had died,

⁶⁴ Not one person on this list had been among those listed in the previous registration taken by Moses and Aaron in the wilderness of Sinai. ⁶⁵ For the Lord had said of them, “They will all die in the wilderness.” Not one of them survived except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

¹⁷ And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom was God speaking when he took an oath that they would never enter his rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed him? ¹⁹ So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.

¹⁴ “Thirty-eight years passed from the time we first left Kadesh-barnea until we finally crossed the Zered Brook! By then, all the men old enough to fight in battle had died in the wilderness, as the Lord had vowed would happen.

²² not one of these people will ever enter that land. They have all seen my glorious presence and the miraculous signs I performed both in Egypt and in the wilderness, but again and again they have tested me by refusing to listen to my voice.