12. How can I bear your load and burden and bickering by myself?
13. Choose for yourselves wise and discerning men, well known to your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads.’
14. “You answered me and said: ‘The thing you have said to do is good.’
15. So I took the heads of your tribes, men who were wise and well known, and appointed them as heads over you—leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, leaders of tens, and officials for your tribes.
16. “I commanded your judges at that time saying: ‘Hear cases between your brothers, and judge fairly between a man and his brother or the outsider with him.
17. You must not show partiality in judgment —you must hear the small and the great alike. Fear no man, for the judgment is God’s. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me and I will hear it.’
18. “I commanded you at that time everything you should do.
19. “Then we journeyed from Horeb and went through all that great and terrible wilderness that you saw on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as Adonai our God commanded us. Then we came to Kadesh-barnea.
20. I said to you: ‘You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which Adonai our God is giving to us.
21. See, Adonai your God has set the land before you—go up, take possession, as Adonai God of your fathers has promised you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.’
22. “Then all of you came near to me and said: ‘Let’s send men ahead of us to explore the land for us and bring us back word about the way we should go up and the cities we will enter.’
23. “The idea seemed good to me, so I took twelve men from among you—one man for each tribe.
24. They turned and went up into the hill country, and they came to the Wadi Eshcol and spied it out.
25. They took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us. They also brought back word to us and said, ‘Good is the land that Adonai our God is giving to us.’
26. “Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of Adonai your God.
27. In your tents you grumbled and said: ‘Because Adonai hates us, He has brought us out from the land of Egypt to hand us over to the Amorites, to destroy us!
28. Where are we going? Our brothers have discouraged our hearts saying, “The people are greater and taller than we are! The cities are great and fortified up to the heavens! Besides, we have even seen the children of Anakim there!”’
29. “Then I said to you, ‘Don’t tremble or be afraid of them.
30. Adonai your God, who goes before you, He Himself will fight for you—just as He did for you in Egypt before your own eyes,
31. and in the wilderness, where you saw how Adonai your God carried you as a man carries his son, everywhere you went until you came to this place.’