10. The Lord your God has multiplied you, and surely you are this day as numerous as the stars of heaven.
11. May the Lord, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times more numerous and bless you, just as He has promised you!
12. How can I myself bear your load and your burden and your strife?
13. Choose wise, discerning, and knowing men, among your tribes, and I will appoint them as leaders over you.”
14. You answered me, and said, “The thing which you have said is good for us to do.”
15. So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and well-known men, and appointed them as leaders over you, leaders over thousands, and leaders over hundreds, and leaders over fifties, and leaders over tens, and officers among your tribes.
16. I charged your judges at that time, saying, “Hear the issues between your countrymen, and judge righteously between every man and his fellow countryman, and the foreigner that is with him.
17. You shall not show partiality in judgment, but you shallhear the small as well as the great. You shall not be afraid in any man’s presence, for the judgment is God’s. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring it to me, and I will hear it.”
18. At that time, I commanded you all the things you should do.
19. When we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great and terrible wilderness, which you saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us, and we came to Kadesh Barnea.
20. I said to you, “You have come to the mountains of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving to us.
21. See, the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up and possess it, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, spoke to you. Do not fear or be discouraged.”
22. So all of you came near to me and said, “Let us send men before us, so that they shall scout out the land, and bring back to us word concerning what way we should go up and into what cities we shall come.”
23. The thing pleased me, and I took twelve men from you, one out of each tribe.
24. They turned and went up into the hill country and came to the Valley of Eshkol and scouted it out.
25. They took the fruit of the land in their hands, and brought it down to us, and brought us word again, and said, “It is a good land which the Lord our God is giving us.”
26. Yet you were not willing to go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God.