Numbers 14:14-41
English Standard Version
Chapter 14
14and they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people. For you, O Lord, 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 kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard your fame will say, 16‘It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to give to them that he has killed them in the wilderness.’ 17And now, please let the power of the Lord be great as you have promised, saying, 18‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ 19Please pardon the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt until now."
20Then the Lord said, "I have pardoned, according to your word.
21But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord,
22none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice,
23shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it.
24But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.
25Now, since the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea."
26And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
27"How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me.
28Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you:
29your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me,
30not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.
31But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected.
32But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness.
33And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.
34According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’
35I, the Lord, have spoken. Surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die."
36And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land —
37the men who brought up a bad report of the land — died by plague before the Lord.
38Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive.
39When Moses told these words to all the people of Israel, the people mourned greatly.
40And they rose early in the morning and went up to the heights of the hill country, saying, "Here we are. We will go up to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned."
41But Moses said, "Why now are you transgressing the command of the Lord, when that will not succeed?
