29. Here in the wilderness your dead bodies shall fall. Of all your men of twenty years or more, enrolled in your registration, who grumbled against me,
30. not one of you shall enter the land where I solemnly swore to settle you, except Caleb, son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, son of Nun.
31. Your little ones, however, who you said would be taken as spoil, I will bring in, and they shall know the land you rejected.
32. But as for you, your bodies shall fall here in the wilderness,
33. while your children will wander for forty years, suffering for your infidelity, till the last of you lies dead in the wilderness.
34. Corresponding to the number of days you spent reconnoitering the land—forty days—you shall bear your punishment one year for each day: forty years. Thus you will realize what it means to oppose me.
35. I, the Lord, have spoken; and I will surely do this to this entire wicked community that conspired against me: here in the wilderness they shall come to their end and there they will die.”
36. And the men whom Moses had sent to reconnoiter the land and who on returning had set the whole community grumbling against him by spreading discouraging reports about the land—
37. these men who had spread discouraging reports about the land were struck down by the Lord and died.
38. Only Joshua, son of Nun, and Caleb, son of Jephunneh, survived of all the men who had gone to reconnoiter the land.
39. When Moses repeated these words to all the Israelites, the people mourned greatly.
40. Early the next morning they started up high into the hill country, saying, “Here we are, ready to go up to the place that the Lord spoke of: for we did wrong.”
41. But Moses said, “Why are you now transgressing the Lord’s order? This cannot succeed.