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

26 And Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 27 "How long [will I bear] this evil community who are grumbling against me? I have heard the grumbling of the {Israelites} which {they are making} against me. 28 Say to them, 'Surely as I live,' {declares} Yahweh, 'just as you spoke {in my hearing}, so I will do to you; 29 in this desert your corpses will fall, and all your counted ones, according to all your number, from {twenty years old} and above who grumbled against me. 30 You [yourselves] will not come into the land that {I swore by oath} to make you to dwell in it, but Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 31 But your little children, whom you said would be plunder, I will bring them, and they will know the land that you rejected. 32 But for you, all your corpses will fall in this desert. 33 And your children will be shepherds in the desert forty years, and you will bear your unfaithfulness until {all your corpses have fallen} in the desert. 34 According to the number of the days that you explored the land, forty days, {a day for each year}, you will bear your sins forty years, and you will know my opposition.' 35 I, Yahweh, have spoken; I will surely do this to all this evil community who has banded together against me. In this desert they will come to an end, and there they will die."

36 As for the men whom Moses sent to explore the land, who returned and made the community grumble against him by spreading a report over the land, 37 the men who spread the evil report of the land died by the plague {before Yahweh}. 38 But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh lived from [among] the men who went to explore the land.

39 And Moses spoke words to all the {Israelites}, and the people mourned greatly. 40 They rose early in the morning and went to the top of the mount, saying, "Here we are. We will go up to the place that Yahweh said, because we have sinned."

41 But Moses said, "Why [are] you going against the command of Yahweh? It will not succeed. 42 You should not go up because Yahweh is not in your midst; do not let yourselves be defeated in the presence of your enemies, 43 because the Amalekites and the Canaanites [are] there {before you}, and you will fall by the sword; because you have turned [back] from Yahweh, and Yahweh will not be with you."

44 But they dared to go to the top of the mountain, and the ark of the covenant of Yahweh and Moses did not depart from the midst of the camp. 45 So the Amalekites and the Canaanites who were living on the mountain descended, and they beat them down, up to Hormah.