Numbers 14:13-29

¹³Moses said to Yahweh, “Then the Egyptians will hear it; for you brought up this people in your might from among them.

¹⁴They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you Yahweh are among this people; for you Yahweh are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them, and you go before them, in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night.

¹⁵Now if you killed this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of you will speak, saying,

¹⁶‘Because Yahweh was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness.’

¹⁷Now please let the power of the Lord be great, according as you have spoken, saying,

¹⁸‘Yahweh is slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience; and he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation.’

¹⁹Please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your loving kindness, and just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”

²⁰Yahweh said, “I have pardoned according to your word;

²¹but in very deed—as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with Yahweh’s glory—

²²because all those men who have seen my glory and my signs, which I worked in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not listened to my voice;

²³surely they shall not see the land which I swore to their fathers, neither shall any of those who despised me see it.

²⁴But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and has followed me fully, him I will bring into the land into which he went. His offspring shall possess it.

²⁵Since the Amalekite and the Canaanite dwell in the valley, tomorrow turn and go into the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.”

²⁶Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,

²⁷“How long shall I bear with this evil congregation that complain against me? I have heard the complaints of the children of Israel, which they complain against me.

²⁸Tell them, ‘As I live, says Yahweh, surely as you have spoken in my ears, so I will do to you.

²⁹Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness; and all who were counted of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, who have complained against me,