Numbers 14:11-23

Holman Christian Standard Bible

God’s Judgment of Israel’s Rebellion

¹¹The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people despise Me? How long will they not trust in Me despite all the signs I have performed among them?^(A) ¹²I will strike them with a plague and destroy them. Then I will make you into a greater and mightier nation than they are.”^(B)

¹³But Moses replied to the Lord, “The Egyptians will hear about it, for by Your strength You brought up this people from them. ¹⁴They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land.^(C) They have heard that You, Lord, are among these people, how You, Lord, are seen face to face, how Your cloud stands over them, and how You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.^(D) ¹⁵If You kill this people with a single blow,^[a]^(E) the nations that have heard of Your fame^(F) will declare, ¹⁶‘Since the Lord wasn’t able to bring this people into the land He swore to give them,^(G) He has slaughtered them in the wilderness.’^(H)

¹⁷“So now, may my Lord’s power be magnified just as You have spoken: ¹⁸The Lord is slow to anger and rich in faithful love,^(I) forgiving wrongdoing and rebellion.^(J) But He will not leave the guilty unpunished,^(K) bringing the consequences of the fathers’ wrongdoing on the children to the third and fourth generation.^(L) ¹⁹Please pardon the wrongdoing of this people, in keeping with the greatness of Your faithful love,^(M) just as You have forgiven them from Egypt until now.”

²⁰The Lord responded, “I have pardoned them as you requested. ²¹Yet as surely as I live and as the whole earth is filled with the Lord’s glory,^(N) ²²none of the men who have seen My glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tested Me these 10 times and did not obey Me, ²³will ever see the land I swore to give their fathers.^(O) None of those who have despised Me^(P) will see it.