The Lord spoke further to Moses and Aaron, "How much longer shall that wicked community keep muttering against Me? Very well, I have heeded the incessant muttering of the Israelites against Me. Say to them: 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'I will do to you just as you have urged Me. In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop. Of all of you who were recorded in your various lists from the age of twenty years up, you who have muttered against Me, not one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you - save Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. Your children who, you said, would be carried off - these will I allow to enter; they shall know the land that you have rejected. But your carcasses shall drop in this wilderness, while your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness. You shall bear your punishment for forty years, corresponding to the number of days - forty days - that you scouted the land: a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it means to thwart Me. I the Lord have spoken: Thus will I do to all that wicked band that has banded together against Me: in this very wilderness they shall die to the last man.'"
As for the men whom Moses sent to scout the land, those who came back and caused the whole community to mutter against him by spreading calumnies about the land - those who spread such calumnies about the land died of plague, by the will of the Lord. Of those men who had gone to scout the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh survived.
When Moses repeated these words to all the Israelites, the people were overcome by grief. Early next morning they set out toward the crest of the hill country, saying, "We are prepared to go up to the place that the Lord has spoken of, for we were wrong." But Moses said, "Why do you transgress the Lord's command? This will not succeed. Do not go up, lest you be routed by your enemies, for the Lord is not in your midst. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites will be there to face you, and you will fall by the sword, inasmuch as you have turned from following the Lord and the Lord will not be with you."
Yet defiantly they marched toward the crest of the hill country, though neither the Lord's Ark of the Covenant nor Moses stirred from the camp. And the Amalekites and the Canaaniteswho dwelt in that hill country came down and dealt them a shatttering blow at Hormah.
When Moses repeated these words to all the Israelites, the people were overcome by grief. Early next morning they set out toward the crest of the hill country, saying, "We are prepared to go up to the place that the Lord has spoken of, for we were wrong." But Moses said, "Why do you transgress the Lord's command? This will not succeed. Do not go up, lest you be routed by your enemies, for the Lord is not in your midst. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites will be there to face you, and you will fall by the sword, inasmuch as you have turned from following the Lord and the Lord will not be with you."
Yet defiantly they marched toward the crest of the hill country, though neither the Lord's Ark of the Covenant nor Moses stirred from the camp. And the Amalekites and the Canaaniteswho dwelt in that hill country came down and dealt them a shatttering blow at Hormah.
Numbers 14, 26-45
(JPS Tanakh)
