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!
35. I swear that I will do this to you wicked people who have gathered together against me. Here in the wilderness every one of you will die. I, the Lord, have spoken.’ ”
36-37. The men Moses had sent to explore the land brought back a false report which caused the people to complain against the Lord. And so the Lord struck them with a disease, and they died.
38. Of the twelve spies only Joshua and Caleb survived.
39. When Moses told the Israelites what the Lord had said, they mourned bitterly.
40. Early the next morning they started out to invade the hill country, saying, “Now we are ready to go to the place which the Lord told us about. We admit that we have sinned.”