12. I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.”
13. Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them.
14. And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that you, Lord, are with these people and that you, Lord, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
15. If you put all these people to death, leaving none alive, the nations who have heard this report about you will say,
16. ‘The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath, so he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’
17. “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared:
18. ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’
19. In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
20. The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked.
21. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth,
22. not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times—
23. not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.
24. But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.
25. Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea. ”
26. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron:
27. “How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites.
28. So tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very thing I heard you say:
29. In this wilderness your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me.
30. Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.