16. I furthermore admonished your judges at that time that they should pay attention to issues among your fellow citizens and judge fairly, whether between one citizen and another or a citizen and a resident foreigner.
17. They must not discriminate in judgment, but hear the lowly and the great alike. Nor should they be intimidated by human beings, for judgment belongs to God. If the matter being adjudicated is too difficult for them, they should bring it before me for a hearing.
18. So I instructed you at that time regarding everything you should do.
19. Then we left Horeb and passed through all that immense, forbidding wilderness that you saw on the way to the Amorite hill country as the Lord our God had commanded us to do, finally arriving at Kadesh Barnea.
20. Then I said to you, “You have come to the Amorite hill country which the Lord our God is about to give us.
21. Look, he has placed the land in front of you! Go up, take possession of it, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, said to do. Do not be afraid or discouraged!”
22. So all of you approached me and said, “Let’s send some men ahead of us to scout out the land and bring us back word as to how we should attack it and what the cities are like there.”
23. I thought this was a good idea, so I sent twelve men from among you, one from each tribe.
24. They left and went up to the hill country, coming to the Eshcol Valley, which they scouted out.
25. Then they took some of the produce of the land and carried it back down to us. They also brought a report to us, saying, “The land that the Lord our God is about to give us is good.”
26. You were not willing to go up, however, but instead rebelled against the Lord your God.
27. You complained among yourselves privately and said, “Because the Lord hates us he brought us from Egypt to deliver us over to the Amorites so they could destroy us!
28. What is going to happen to us? Our brothers have drained away our courage by describing people who are more numerous and taller than we are, and great cities whose defenses appear to be as high as heaven itself! Moreover, they said they saw Anakites there.”
29. So I responded to you, “Do not be terrified of them!
30. The Lord your God is about to go ahead of you; he will fight for you, just as you saw him do in Egypt
31. and in the desert, where you saw him carrying you along like a man carries his son. This he did everywhere you went until you came to this very place.”