12. I will strike them with a plague and destroy them. Then I will make you into a greater and mightier nation than they are.”
13. But Moses replied to the Lord, “The Egyptians will hear about it, for by Your strength You brought up this people from them.
14. They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that You, Lord, are among these people, how You, Lord, are seen face to face, how Your cloud stands over them, and how You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.
15. If You kill this people with a single blow, the nations that have heard of Your fame will declare,
16. ‘Since the Lord wasn’t able to bring this people into the land He swore to give them, He has slaughtered them in the wilderness.’
17. “So now, may my Lord’s power be magnified just as You have spoken:
18. The Lord is slow to anger and rich in faithful love, forgiving wrongdoing and rebellion. But He will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ wrongdoing on the children to the third and fourth generation.
19. Please pardon the wrongdoing of this people, in keeping with the greatness of Your faithful love, just as You have forgiven them from Egypt until now.”
20. The Lord responded, “I have pardoned them as you requested.
21. Yet as surely as I live and as the whole earth is filled with the Lord’s glory,
22. none of the men who have seen My glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tested Me these 10 times and did not obey Me,
23. will ever see the land I swore to give their fathers. None of those who have despised Me will see it.
24. But since My servant Caleb has a different spirit and has followed Me completely, I will bring him into the land where he has gone, and his descendants will inherit it.
25. Since the Amalekites and Canaanites are living in the lowlands, turn back tomorrow and head for the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea.”
26. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron:
27. “How long must I endure this evil community that keeps complaining about Me? I have heard the Israelites’ complaints that they make against Me.
28. Tell them: As surely as I live,” this is the Lord’s declaration, “I will do to you exactly as I heard you say.
29. Your corpses will fall in this wilderness — all of you who were registered in the census, the entire number of you 20 years old or more — because you have complained about Me.
30. I swear that none of you will enter the land I promised to settle you in, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.