12. Also I gave them my Sabbaths as a sign between us, so they would know that I the Lord made them holy.
13. “ ‘Yet the people of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. They did not follow my decrees but rejected my laws—by which the person who obeys them will live—and they utterly desecrated my Sabbaths. So I said I would pour out my wrath on them and destroy them in the wilderness.
14. But for the sake of my name I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.
15. Also with uplifted hand I swore to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land I had given them—a land flowing with milk and honey, the most beautiful of all lands—
16. because they rejected my laws and did not follow my decrees and desecrated my Sabbaths. For their hearts were devoted to their idols.
17. Yet I looked on them with pity and did not destroy them or put an end to them in the wilderness.