12. But how can I, by myself, bear the weight, the contentiousness of you?
13. Provide wise, discerning, and reputable persons for each of your tribes, that I may appoint them as your leaders.”
14. You answered me, “What you have proposed is good.”
15. So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and reputable, and set them as leaders over you, commanders over thousands, over hundreds, over fifties and over tens, and other tribal officers.
16. I charged your judges at that time, “Listen to complaints among your relatives, and administer true justice to both parties even if one of them is a resident alien.
17. In rendering judgment, do not consider who a person is; give ear to the lowly and to the great alike, fearing no one, for the judgment is God’s. Any case that is too difficult for you bring to me and I will hear it.”
18. Thus I charged you, at that time, with all the things you were to do.
19. Then we set out from Horeb and journeyed through that whole vast and fearful wilderness that you have seen, in the direction of the hill country of the Amorites, as the Lord, our God, had commanded; and we came to Kadesh-barnea.
20. I said to you, “You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord, our God, is giving us.
21. See, the Lord, your God, has given this land over to you. Go up and take possession of it, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”
22. Then all of you approached me and said, “Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and report to us on the road we should follow and the cities we will come upon.”
23. Agreeing with the proposal, I took twelve men from your number, one from each tribe.
24. They set out into the hill country as far as the Wadi Eshcol, and explored it.
25. Then, taking along some of the fruit of the land, they brought it down to us and reported, “The land the Lord, our God, is giving us is good.”
26. But you refused to go up; you defied the command of the Lord, your God.
27. You set to murmuring in your tents, “Out of hatred for us the Lord has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the power of the Amorites and destroy us.
28. What shall we meet with up there? Our men have made our hearts melt by saying, ‘The people are bigger and taller than we, and their cities are large and fortified to the sky; besides, we saw the Anakim there.’”