Numbers 14

¹ At this, the whole community raised their voices and cried aloud, and the people wailed all that night.

² Then all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole community said, ‘Would that we had died in the land of Egypt, or at least that we had died in this wilderness!

³ Why does Yahweh bring us to this land, only to have us fall by the sword, and our wives and young children seized as booty? Should we not do better to go back to Egypt?’

⁴ And they said to one another, ‘Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt’.

⁵ Before the whole assembled community of the sons of Israel, Moses and Aaron fell down, face to the ground.

⁶ Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, two of those who had reconnoitred the country, tore their garments;

⁷ and they said to the entire community of the sons of Israel, ‘The land we went to reconnoitre is a good land, an excellent land.

⁸ If Yahweh is pleased with us, he will lead us into this land and give it to us. It is a land where milk and honey flow.

⁹ Do not rebel against Yahweh. And do not be afraid of the people of this land; we shall gobble them up. Their tutelary shadow has gone from them so long as Yahweh is with us.[*a] Do not be afraid of them.

¹⁰ The entire community was talking of stoning them, when the glory of Yahweh appeared at the Tent of Meeting to all the sons of Israel.

¹¹ And Yahweh said to Moses: ‘How long will this people insult me? How long will they refuse to believe in me despite the signs I have worked among them?

¹² I will strike them with pestilence and disown them. And of you I shall make a new nation, greater and mightier than they are.’

¹³ Moses answered Yahweh: ‘But the Egyptians already know that you, by your own power, have brought this people out from their midst.

¹⁴ They have said as much to the inhabitants of this country. They already know that you, Yahweh, are in the midst of this people, and that you show yourself to them face to face; that it is you, Yahweh, whose cloud stands over them, that you go before them in a pillar of cloud is by day and a pillar of fire by night.

¹⁵ If you destroy this people now as if it were one man, then the nations who have heard about you will say,

¹⁶ “Yahweh was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to give them, and so he has slaughtered them in the wilderness”.

¹⁷ No, my Lord! It is now you must display your power, according to those words you spoke,

¹⁸ “Yahweh is slow to anger and rich in graciousness, forgiving faults and transgression, and yet letting nothing go unchecked, punishing the father’s fault in the sons to the third and fourth generation”.

¹⁹ In the abundance, then, of your graciousness, forgive the sin of this people, as you have done from Egypt until now.

²⁰ Yahweh said, ‘I forgive them as you ask.

²¹ But-as I live, and as the glory of Yahweh fills all the earth-

²² of all the men who have seen my glory and the signs that I worked in Egypt and in the wilderness, who have put me to the test ten times already and obeyed my voice,

²³ not one shall see the land I swore to give their fathers. Not one of those who slight me shall see it. But

²⁴ my servant Caleb is of another spirit. Because he has obeyed me perfectly, I will bring him into the land he has entered, and his race shall possess it. (The Amalekite and the Canaanite dwell in the plain.)

²⁵ Tomorrow you will turn about and go back into the wilderness, in the direction of the Sea of Suph

²⁶ Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron. He said:

²⁷ ‘How long does this perverse community, which complains against me…? I have heard the complaints which the sons of Israel make against me.

²⁸ Say to them, “As I live – it is Yahweh who speaks – I will deal with you according to the very words you have used in my hearing.

²⁹ In this wilderness your dead bodies will fall, all you men of the census, all you who were numbered from the age of twenty years and over, you who have complained against me.

³⁰ I swear that you shall not enter the land where I swore most solemnly, to settle you. It is Caleb son of Jephunneh, and Joshua son of Nun,

³¹ and your young children that you said would be seized as booty, it is these I shall bring in to know the land you have disdained.

³² As for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness,

³³ and your sons will be nomads in the wilderness for forty years, bearing the weight of your faithlessness, until the last of you lies dead in the desert.

³⁴ For forty days you reconnoitred the land. Each day shall count for a year: for forty years you shall bear the burden of your sins, and you shall learn what it means to reject me.”

³⁵ I, Yahweh, have spoken: this is how I will deal with this perverse community that has conspired against me. Here in this wilderness, to the last man, they shall die.’

³⁶ The men whom Moses had sent to reconnoitre the land, who on their return had incited the whole community of Israel to grumble against Yahweh by disparaging it,

³⁷ these men who had disparaged the land were all struck dead before Yahweh.

³⁸ Of the men who had gone to reconnoitre the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh remained alive.

³⁹ Moses reported these words to all the sons of Israel, and the people set up a great outcry.

⁴⁰ Then they rose early and set out for the heights of the highlands saying, ‘Look, we are setting out for this place, since Yahweh has told us that we have sinned’.

⁴¹ Moses replied, ‘Why disobey the command of Yahweh? Nothing will come of it.

⁴² Do not go up, for Yahweh is not among you; do not get yourselves beaten by your enemies.

⁴³ Yes, there facing you are the Amalekite and the Canaanite, and you will fall to their swords because you have turned away from Yahweh, and Yahweh is not with you.’

⁴⁴ Yet they set out presumptuously towards the heights of the highlands. Neither the ark of the covenant of Yahweh nor Moses left the camp.

⁴⁵ The Amalekite and the Canaanite who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them, and harried them all the way to Hormah.