24. Only my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit and has followed me fully – I will bring him into the land where he had gone, and his descendants will possess it.
25. (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites were living in the valleys.) Tomorrow, turn and journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.”
26. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron:
27. “How long must I bear with this evil congregation that murmurs against me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites that they murmured against me.
28. Say to them, ‘As I live, says the Lord, I will surely do to you just what you have spoken in my hearing.
29. Your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness – all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me.
30. You will by no means enter into the land where I swore to settle you. The only exceptions are Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
31. But I will bring in your little ones, whom you said would become victims of war, and they will enjoy the land that you have despised.
32. But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness,
33. and your children will wander in the wilderness forty years and suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your dead bodies lie finished in the wilderness.
34. According to the number of the days you have investigated this land, forty days – one day for a year – you will suffer for your iniquities, forty years, and you will know what it means to thwart me.
35. I, the Lord, have said, “I will surely do so to all this evil congregation that has gathered together against me. In this wilderness they will be finished, and there they will die!”’”
36. The men whom Moses sent to investigate the land, who returned and made the whole community murmur against him by producing an evil report about the land,
37. those men who produced the evil report about the land, died by the plague before the Lord.
38. But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among the men who went to investigate the land, lived.
39. When Moses told these things to all the Israelites, the people mourned greatly.
40. And early in the morning they went up to the crest of the hill country, saying, “Here we are, and we will go up to the place that the Lord commanded, for we have sinned.”
41. But Moses said, “Why are you now transgressing the commandment of the Lord? It will not succeed!
42. Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, and you will be defeated before your enemies.