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.”