Numbers 14:18-41

¹⁸The Eternal is long-suffering, and abundant in beneficence, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.

¹⁹Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of thy beneficence, and as thou hast been indulgent to this people, from Egypt even until hitherto.

²⁰And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word.

²¹But as truly as I live, and as all the earth is filled with the glory of the Lord:—

²²That all the men who have seen my glory, and my signs, which I have displayed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice,

²³Shall surely not see the land which I have sworn unto their fathers, yea all those that have provoked me shall not see it.

²⁴But my servant Caleb, as a reward that he had another spirit with him, and followed me fully,—therefore will I bring him into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it.

²⁵And the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valley: tomorrow turn you, and set forward into the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.

²⁶And the Lord spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,

²⁷How long shall indulgence be given to this evil congregation, that murmur against me? the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against me, have I heard.

²⁸Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the Lord, as ye have spoken in my ears, so will I do to you:

²⁹In this wilderness shall your carcasses fall, and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward; ye who have murmured against me;

³⁰Truly ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I have lifted up my hand to let you dwell therein; save Caleb the son of Yephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.

³¹But your little ones of which ye said, They would become a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.

³²But as for you, your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness.

³³And your children shall wander about in the wilderness forty years, and bear your backslidings, until your carcasses be spent in the wilderness.

³⁴After the number of the days in which ye spied out the land, forty days, yea, each one day for a year, shall ye bear for your iniquities, forty years; and ye shall experience my withdrawal of protection.

³⁵I the Lord have spoken it, surely, this will I do unto all this evil congregation that have assembled against me: in this wilderness shall they be spent, and therein shall they die.

³⁶And the men whom Moses had sent to spy out the land, and who returned, and caused all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up an evil report against the land,

³⁷Even these men, that had brought up the evil report of the land, died by the plague before the Lord.

³⁸But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Yephunneh, remained alive of those men, who had gone to spy out the land.

³⁹And Moses spoke these words unto all the children of Israel; and the people mourned greatly.

⁴⁰And they rose up early in the morning, and went up to the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, here we are, and we will go up unto the place of which the Lord hath spoken; for we have sinned.

⁴¹And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the order of the Lord? and it will not prosper.