Read the Modern Pastor’s Version

All the congregation lifted up their voice and cried. That night they wept because they had murmured against Moses and Aaron. They said, "Would God we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness!"

"Why has the Lord brought us to this land?" they asked. "Only to fall by the sword? To have our wives and children taken captive? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?"

They said to one another, "Let's appoint a leader and return to Egypt." Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the Israelites.

Joshua and Caleb, who had explored the land with them, tore their clothes. They spoke to all the people, saying, "The land we passed through is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land that flows with milk and honey."

"But don't rebel against the Lord," they warned. "Neither fear the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not." But all the congregation demanded that Joshua and Caleb be stoned.

The glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle before all the Israelites. The Lord said to Moses, "How long will this people provoke me? How long will it be before they believe in me, seeing all the signs I have shown among them?"

"I will strike them with a deadly plague and dispossess them," he said. "You will become a greater nation than they." But Moses pleaded for his people, saying, "Then the Egyptians will hear it, for you brought up this people in your mighty power from among them."

"They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land," Moses continued. "For they have heard that you are among this people, that you are seen face to face, and that your cloud stands over them, and that you go before them by day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire."

"If you were to kill all these people," Moses said, "then the nations that have heard of your fame would say, 'Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to them, therefore he has destroyed them in the wilderness.'"

The Lord listened to Moses' prayer and pardoned his people according to his lovingkindness. But as truly as I live," he said, "all the earth shall be filled with my glory."

However, because all those men who had seen God's glory and miracles in Egypt and the wilderness had repeatedly disobeyed him, they would not see the land that he swore to their fathers.

But my servant Caleb has another spirit within him. He followed me fully, so I will bring him into the land where he went; his descendants shall possess it. The Amalekites and Canaanites dwelled in the valley; tomorrow turn you into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.

The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, "Your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness." How long would he bear with their evil congregation that murmured against him? He had heard the murmurings of the Israelites, which they murmured against him.

As truly as I live," God said, "what you have spoken in my ears will be done to you. Your corpses will fall in this wilderness, and all who were counted among you from twenty years old upward, according to your entire number, who have murmured against me."

You would not enter the land that he swore to make them dwell in it, except for Caleb and Joshua. But their little ones would enter and come to know the land they had scorned.

Your children will wander in the wilderness for forty years, bearing the consequences of your unfaithfulness until their bodies waste away in the desert. After the number of days you searched the land, forty days corresponding to a year, you will bear your iniquities for forty years, and you will know my breach of promise.

I the Lord have said, "I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation that are gathered against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die." And the men who brought up the evil report about the land died by the plague before the Lord.

Joshua and Caleb remained alive. Moses told all the Israelites these words, and they mourned deeply. They rose up early in the morning and ascended to the top of the mountain, declaring, "We are here, and we will ascend to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned."

Moses said, "Why are you now disobeying the command of the Lord? But it will not succeed. Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you; otherwise, you will be defeated by your enemies." The Amalekites and Canaanites were before them, and they would fall by the sword because they had turned away from the Lord.

But they presumptuously decided to ascend to the hilltop. Nevertheless, the ark of the covenant of the Lord and Moses did not depart from the camp. The Amalekites and Canaanites who lived in that hill came down and defeated them, routing them all the way to Hormah.