Numbers 14:26-45 - The Lord Punishes The Israelites

²⁶ The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ²⁷ “How long shall I put up with this evil congregation who murmur [in discontent] against Me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites, which they are making against Me. ²⁸ Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just what you have spoken in My hearing I will most certainly do to you; ²⁹ your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, even all who were numbered of you, your entire number from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against Me. ³⁰ Except for Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun, not one of you shall enter the land in which I swore [an oath] to settle you. ³¹ But your children whom you said would become plunder, I will bring in, and they will know the land which you have despised and rejected. ³² But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness. ³³ Your sons shall be wanderers and shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness (spiritual infidelity), until your corpses are consumed in the wilderness. ³⁴ According to the number of days in which you spied out the land [of Canaan], forty days, for each day, you shall bear and suffer a year for your sins and guilt, for forty years, and you shall know My displeasure [the revoking of My promise and My estrangement because of your sin]. ³⁵ I, the Lord, have spoken. I will most certainly do this to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed [by war, disease, and plagues], and here they shall die.’”

³⁶ As for the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, and who returned and made all the congregation murmur and complain against him by bringing back a bad report concerning the land, ³⁷ even those [ten] men who brought back the very bad report of the land died by a plague before the Lord. ³⁸ But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive out of those men who went to spy out the land.

³⁹ Moses spoke the Lord’s words to all the Israelites, and the people mourned greatly. ⁴⁰ They got up early in the morning and went up to the ridge of the hill country, saying, “Look, here we are; we have indeed sinned, but we will go up to the place which the Lord has promised.”

⁴¹ But Moses said, “Why then are you transgressing the commandment of the Lord, when it will not succeed? ⁴² Do not go up, or you will be struck down before your enemies, for the Lord is not among you. ⁴³ For the Amalekites and the Canaanites will be there in front of you, and you will fall by the sword, because you have turned away from following the Lord; therefore the Lord will not be with you.”

⁴⁴ But [in their arrogance] they dared to go up to the ridge of the hill country; however, neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses left the camp. ⁴⁵ Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and struck the Israelites and scattered them as far as Hormah.