Numbers 14:11-38

Complete Jewish Bible

¹¹ Adonai said to Moshe, “How much longer is this people going to treat me with contempt? How much longer will they not trust me, especially considering all the signs I have performed among them? ¹² I am going to strike them with sickness, destroy them and make from you a nation greater and stronger than they are!”

¹³ However, Moshe replied to Adonai, “When the Egyptians hear about this — [and they will,] because it was from among them that you, by your strength, brought this people up — ¹⁴ they will tell the people living in this land. They have heard that you, Adonai, are with this people; that you, Adonai, are seen face to face; that your cloud stands over them; that you go ahead of them in a column of cloud by day and a column of fire by night. ¹⁵ If you kill off this people at a single stroke, then the nations that have heard of your reputation will say ¹⁶ that the reason Adonai slaughtered this people in the desert is that he wasn’t able to bring them into the land which he swore to give them. ¹⁷ So now, please, let Adonai’s power be as great as when you said, ¹⁸ ‘Adonai is slow to anger, rich in grace, forgiving offenses and crimes; yet not exonerating the guilty, but causing the negative effects of the parents’ offenses to be experienced by their children and even by the third and fourth generations.’ ¹⁹ Please! Forgive the offense of this people according to the greatness of your grace, just as you have borne with this people from Egypt until now.”

²⁰ Adonai answered, “I have forgiven, as you have asked. ²¹ But as sure as I live, and that the whole earth is filled with the glory of Adonai, ²² none of the people who saw my glory and the signs I did in Egypt and in the desert, yet tested me these ten times and did not listen to my voice, ²³ will see the land I swore to their ancestors! None of those who treated me with contempt will see it. ²⁴ But my servant Kalev, because he had a different Spirit with him and has fully followed me — him I will bring into the land he entered, and it will belong to his descendants.

²⁵ “Now, since the ‘Amaleki and the Kena‘ani are living in the valley, tomorrow turn around and get yourselves into the desert along the way to the Sea of Suf.”

(iv) ²⁶ Adonai said to Moshe and Aharon, ²⁷ “How long am I to put up with this evil community who keep grumbling about me? I have heard the complaints of the people of Isra’el, which they continue to raise against me. ²⁸ Tell them this: ‘As surely as I live, Adonai swears, as surely as you have spoken in my ears, I will do this to you: ²⁹ your carcasses will fall in this desert! Every single one of you who were included in the census over the age of twenty, you who have complained against me, ³⁰ will certainly not enter the land about which I raised my hand to swear that I would have you live in it — except for Kalev the son of Y’funeh and Y’hoshua the son of Nun. ³¹ But your little ones, who you said would be taken as booty — them I will bring in. They will know the land you have rejected. ³² But you, your carcasses will fall in this desert; ³³ and your children will wander about in the desert for forty years bearing the consequences of your prostitutions until the desert eats up your carcasses. ³⁴ It will be a year for every day you spent reconnoitering the land that you will bear the consequences of your offenses — forty days, forty years. Then you will know what it means to oppose me! ³⁵ I, Adonai, have spoken.’ I will certainly do this to this whole evil community who have assembled together against me — they will be destroyed in this desert and die there.”

³⁶ The men whom Moshe had sent to reconnoiter the land and who, when they returned, made the entire community complain against him by giving an unfavorable report about the land — ³⁷ those men who gave the unfavorable report about the land died by the plague in the presence of Adonai. ³⁸ Of the men who went to reconnoiter the land, only Y’hoshua the son of Nun and Kalev the son of Y’funeh remained alive.