Numbers 14:26–45

²⁶Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ²⁷“How long will this wicked congregation grumble against Me? I have heard the complaints that the Israelites are making against Me. ²⁸So tell them: As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you exactly as I heard you say. ²⁹Your bodies will fall in this wilderness— all who were numbered in the census, everyone twenty years of age or older— because you have grumbled against Me.

³⁰Surely none of you will enter the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. ³¹But I will bring your children, whom you said would become plunder, into the land you have rejected — and they will enjoy it. ³²As for you, however, your bodies will fall in this wilderness.

³³Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness until the last of your bodies lies in the wilderness. ³⁴In keeping with the forty days you spied out the land, you shall bear your guilt forty years — a year for each day — and you will experience My alienation.

³⁵I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this entire wicked congregation, which has conspired against Me. They will meet their end in the wilderness, and there they will die.”

³⁶So the men Moses had sent to spy out the land, who had returned and made the whole congregation grumble against him by bringing out a bad report about the land— ³⁷those men who had brought out the bad report about the land— were struck down by a plague before the LORD. ³⁸Of those men who had gone to spy out the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh remained alive.

³⁹And when Moses relayed these words to all the Israelites, the people mourned bitterly.

⁴⁰Early the next morning they got up and went up toward the ridge of the hill country. “We have indeed sinned,” they said, “but we will go to the place the LORD has promised.”

⁴¹But Moses said, “Why are you transgressing the commandment of the LORD? This will not succeed! ⁴²Do not go up, lest you be struck down by your enemies, because the LORD is not among you. ⁴³For there the Amalekites and Canaanites will face you, and you will fall by the sword. Because you have turned away from the LORD, He will not be with you.”

⁴⁴But they dared to go up to the ridge of the hill country, though neither Moses nor the ark of the covenant of the LORD moved from the camp. ⁴⁵Then the Amalekites and Canaanites who lived in that part of the hill country came down, attacked them, and routed them all the way to Hormah.