30. The Lord your God will go ahead of you and fight for you as he did in Egypt; you saw him do it.
31. And in the desert you saw how the Lord your God carried you, like one carries a child. And he has brought you safely all the way to this place.”
32. But you still did not trust the Lord your God, even though
33. he had always gone before you to find places for you to camp. In a fire at night and in a cloud during the day, he showed you which way to go.
34. When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry and made an oath, saying,
35. “I promised a good land to your ancestors, but none of you evil people will see it.
36. Only Caleb son of Jephunneh will see it. I will give him and his descendants the land he walked on, because he followed the Lord completely.”
37. Because of you, the Lord was also angry with me and said, “You won’t enter the land either,
38. but your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to take the land for their own.
39. “Your little children that you said would be captured, who do not know right from wrong at this time, will go into the land. I will give the land to them, and they will take it for their own.
40. But you must turn around and follow the desert road toward the Red Sea.”
41. Then you said to me, “We have sinned against the Lord, but now we will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us.” Then all of you put on weapons, thinking it would be easy to go into the mountains.
42. But the Lord said to me, “Tell the people, ‘You must not go up there and fight. I will not be with you, and your enemies will defeat you.’ ”
43. So I told you, but you would not listen. You would not obey the Lord’s command. You were proud, so you went on up into the mountains,
44. and the Amorites who lived in those mountains came out and fought you. They chased you like bees and defeated you from Edom to Hormah.
45. So you came back and cried before the Lord, but the Lord did not listen to you; he refused to pay attention to you.