18. ‘I, the Lord, am not easily angered, and I show great love and faithfulness and forgive sin and rebellion. Yet I will not fail to punish children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their parents.’
19. And now, Lord, according to the greatness of your unchanging love, forgive, I pray, the sin of these people, just as you have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt.”
20. The Lord answered, “I will forgive them, as you have asked.
21. But I promise that as surely as I live and as surely as my presence fills the earth,
22. none of these people will live to enter that land. They have seen the dazzling light of my presence and the miracles that I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, but they have tried my patience over and over again and have refused to obey me.
23. They will never enter the land which I promised to their ancestors. None of those who have rejected me will ever enter it.
24. But because my servant Caleb has a different attitude and has remained loyal to me, I will bring him into the land which he explored, and his descendants will possess the land
25. in whose valleys the Amalekites and the Canaanites now live. Turn back tomorrow and go into the wilderness in the direction of the Gulf of Aqaba.”
26. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron,
27. “How much longer are these wicked people going to complain against me? I have heard enough of these complaints!
28. Now give them this answer: ‘I swear that as surely as I live, I will do to you just what you have asked. I, the Lord, have spoken.
29. You will die and your corpses will be scattered across this wilderness. Because you have complained against me, none of you over twenty years of age will enter that land.
30. I promised to let you live there, but not one of you will, except Caleb and Joshua.
31. You said that your children would be captured, but I will bring them into the land that you rejected, and it will be their home.
32. You will die here in this wilderness.
33. Your children will wander in the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last one of you dies.
34. You will suffer the consequences of your sin for forty years, one year for each of the forty days you spent exploring the land. You will know what it means to have me against you!