25. Now since the Amalekites and Canaanites are inhabiting the valley, turn back tomorrow and set out by the wilderness route toward the Sea of Reeds.”
26. Adonai then said to Moses and Aaron saying,
27. “How long will this wicked community be grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of Bnei-Yisrael grumbling against Me.
28. So tell them, ‘As surely as I live,’ says Adonai, ‘I will do to you just as I heard you say in My ears.
29. In this very wilderness your bodies will drop—every one of you 20 years of age and older who was numbered in the census and grumbled against Me.
30. Not one of you will enter the land about which I lifted My hand to make home for you—except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
31. “As for your children—whom you said would be like plunder—I will bring them in and they will experience the land that you spurned.
32. But your bodies will drop in this wilderness.
33. Your children will be herdsmen in the wilderness for 40 years. They will suffer because of your unfaithfulness until your corpses are consumed in the wilderness.
34. For 40 years, corresponding to the number of the 40 days you explored the land—one year for each day—you will suffer for your iniquities and know My hostility.
35. I, Adonai, have spoken and certainly will I do this to all this wicked community banding together against Me. In this wilderness they will meet their end and there they will die!”
36. Then the men whom Moses had sent to explore the land, who had returned and caused the whole community to grumble against him by spreading a bad report about the land,
37. these men, spreading the bad report about the land, died of the plague in Adonai’s presence.
38. Of those men who had gone to explore the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh survived.
39. When Moses related these things to all of Bnei-Yisrael, the people mourned bitterly.
40. They rose the next morning and went up to the high mountains, saying, “Look! Let’s go up to the place which Adonai promised. For we have sinned.”
41. But Moses said, “Why are you disobeying the mouth of Adonai? That will never succeed.