13. Take wise men of understanding and well known according to your tribes, and I will make them heads over you.”
14. You answered me, and said, “The thing which you have spoken is good to do.”
15. So I took the heads of your tribes, wise men, and known, and made them heads over you, captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds, and captains of fifties, and captains of tens, and officers, according to your tribes.
16. I commanded your judges at that time, saying, “Hear cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother, and the foreigner who is living with him.
17. You shall not show partiality in judgement; you shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgement is God’s. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.”
18. I commanded you at that time all the things which you should do.
19. We travelled from Horeb, and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw, by the way to the hill country 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 hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God gives to us.
21. Behold, the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the Lord the God of your fathers has spoken to you. Don’t be afraid, neither be dismayed.”
22. You came near to me, everyone of you, and said, “Let’s send men before us, that they may search the land for us, and bring back to us word of the way by which we must go up, and the cities to which we shall come.”
23. The thing pleased me well. I took twelve of your men, one man for every tribe.
24. They turned and went up into the hill country, and came to the valley of Eshcol, and spied it out.
25. They took some of 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 gives to us.”
26. Yet you wouldn’t go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God.
27. You murmured in your tents, and said, “Because the Lord hated us, he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.
28. Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our heart melt, saying, ‘The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to the sky. Moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there!’”