10. But when the whole community of Israel talked about stoning Moses and Aaron to death, they all saw the glory of the Lord ⌊shining⌋ at the tent of meeting.
11. The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to trust me in spite of all the miraculous signs I have done among them?
12. I’ll strike them with a plague, I’ll destroy them, and I’ll make you into a nation larger and stronger than they are.”
13. But Moses said to the Lord, “What if the Egyptians hear about it? (You used your power to take these people away from them.)
14. What if the Egyptians tell the people who live in this land? Lord, they have already heard that you are with these people, that they have seen you with their own eyes, that your column of smoke stays over them, and that you go ahead of them in a column of smoke by day and in a column of fire by night.
15. But if you kill all these people at the same time, then the nations who have heard these reports about you will say,
16. ‘The Lord wasn’t able to bring these people into the land he promised them, so he slaughtered them in the desert.’
17. “Lord, let your power be as great as when you said,
18. ‘The Lord. . . patient, forever loving. . . . He forgives wrongdoing and disobedience. . . . He never lets the guilty go unpunished, punishing children. . . for their parents’ sins to the third and fourth generation. . . .’
19. By your great love, please forgive these people’s sins, as you have been forgiving them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
20. The Lord said, “I forgive them, as you have asked.
21. But as I live and as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, I solemnly swear that
22. none of the people who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I did in Egypt and in the desert will see the land which I promised their ancestors. They have tested me now ten times and refused to obey me.
23. None of those who treat me with contempt will see it!
24. But because my servant Caleb has a different attitude and has wholeheartedly followed me, I’ll bring him to the land he already explored. His descendants will possess it.