¹³ “The Lord was angry with Israel and made them wander in the wilderness for forty years until the entire generation that sinned in the Lord’s sight had died.

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

³³ And your children will be like shepherds, wandering in the wilderness for forty years. In this way, they will pay for your faithlessness, until the last of you lies dead in the wilderness.

³⁴ “‘Because your men explored the land for forty days, you must wander in the wilderness for forty years—a year for each day, suffering the consequences of your sins. Then you will discover what it is like to have me for an enemy.’ ³⁵ I, the Lord, have spoken! I will certainly do these things to every member of the community who has conspired against me. They will be destroyed here in this wilderness, and here they will die!”

¹⁶ And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard his voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? 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. ¹⁵ The Lord struck them down until they had all been eliminated from the community.

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.