Numbers 14:20-38

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

²⁰ Then the Lord said, “I do forgive, just as you have asked;^{(A) 21} nevertheless, as I live and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord,^{(B) 22} none of the people who have seen my glory and the signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness and yet have tested me these ten times and have not obeyed my voice ²³ shall see the land that I swore to give to their ancestors; none of those who despised me shall see it. ²⁴ But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me wholeheartedly, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.^{(C) 25} Now, since the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.”^[a](D)

An Attempted Invasion Is Repulsed

²⁶ And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, ²⁷ “How long shall this wicked congregation complain against me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites, which they complain against me.^{(E) 28} Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘I will do to you the very things I heard you say:^{(F) 29} your dead bodies shall fall in this very wilderness, and of all your number included in the census from twenty years old and up who have complained against me,^{(G) 30} not one of you shall come into the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.^{(H) 31} But your little ones, who you said would become plunder, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have despised.^{(I) 32} But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness.^{(J) 33} And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.^{(K) 34} According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’^{(L) 35} I the Lord have spoken; surely I will do thus to all this wicked congregation gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die.”^(M)

³⁶ And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land who returned and made all the congregation complain against him by bringing a bad report about the land,^{(N) 37} the men who brought an unfavorable report about the land died by a plague before the Lord. ³⁸ But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh alone remained alive, of those men who went to spy out the land.^(O)