Numbers 14

The People Panic & Complain

1 That night, everybody in the camp started crying and wailing.

2 The Israelites started complaining against Moses and Aaron. They said, We should have died in Egypt or even in this wilderness!

3 Why is the Lord bringing us to this land just to get us killed, Our wives and kids will be taken as slaves. We should go back to Egypt!

4 They started saying to each other, Let us pick a new leader and head back to Egypt.

Moses, Aaron, Joshua & Caleb Try to Talk Sense

5 Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in front of the whole assembly.

6 Joshua (son of Nun) and Caleb (son of Jephunneh), who had explored the land, tore their clothes in frustration.

7 They said, The land we explored is amazing!

8 If the Lord is pleased with us, He will lead us into this land flowing with milk and honey and will give it to us.

9 Do not rebel against the Lord! Do not be scared of the people in the land! They have no protection, but the Lord is with us! Do not be afraid!

10 But the whole assembly started talking about stoning them. Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the Tabernacle for everyone to see.

God Gets Fed Up with Israel’s Doubt

11 The Lord said to Moses, How long will these people disrespect Me, How long will they refuse to trust Me after all the miracles I have done for them,

12 I am about to strike them with a plague and wipe them out. Then I will make you into a greater and stronger nation.

Moses Begs for Mercy

13 Moses said, Lord, if You destroy them, the Egyptians will hear about it.

14 They know You have been leading these people with Your cloud and fire.

15 If You kill them now, the nations watching will say.

16 The Lord could not bring them into the land He promised, so He wiped them out instead.

17 Lord, show Your strength just like You said.

18 The Lord is slow to anger, filled with love, forgiving sin and rebellion, but He will not let the guilty go unpunished.

19 Please forgive these people like You have been doing from Egypt until now.

God Spares Them, but with Consequences

20 The Lord said, Fine. I forgive them, just like you asked.

21 But as surely as I live and as surely as My glory fills the earth.

22 None of these people who saw My miracles in Egypt and the wilderness, but still disrespected Me and tested Me ten times.

23 Will ever see the land I promised to their ancestors. No one who treated Me with contempt will enter it.

24 But My servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows Me completely. I will bring him into the land, and his descendants will inherit it.

25 Now turn back toward the wilderness, because the Amalekites and Canaanites are in the valley.

God’s Judgment: 40 Years in the Wilderness

26 The Lord told Moses and Aaron.

27 How long will this wicked community keep complaining against Me, I have heard enough of their whining.

28 Tell them, As surely as I live, whatever you said in My hearing, I will do to you.

29 Your bodies will fall in this wilderness. Every one of you twenty years old and older who complained against Me will die here.

30 None of you will enter the land I swore to give you, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

31 You were worried about your kids being taken as slaves. Well, I will bring them in, and they will enjoy the land you rejected.

32 But you, Your bodies will drop in this wilderness.

33 Your children will be wandering in the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your sins until your bodies are gone.

34 Because you explored the land for forty days, you will suffer for forty years, one year for each day. Then you will know what it means to have Me against you.

35 I, the Lord, have spoken. Every single one of you who rebelled against Me will die in this wilderness.

The 10 Spies Die on the Spot

36 The men Moses sent to explore the land, who came back spreading fear and doubt among the people.

37 Were struck down by the Lord and died from a plague.

38 Only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh survived.

Israel Tries to Go Without God & Fails

39 When Moses told the Israelites what the Lord said, they mourned deeply.

40 Early the next morning, they got up and went to the top of the hill country, saying, We are ready to go to the land the Lord promised. We admit we messed up.

41 But Moses said, Why are you all disobeying the Lord’s command now, You will not succeed.

42 Do not go, because the Lord is not with you. If you do, you will be defeated by your enemies.

43 The Amalekites and Canaanites will crush you, because you turned away from the Lord. He will not be with you.

44 But they ignored Moses and went up to the hill country anyway. Moses and the Ark of the Covenant did not go with them.

45 Then the Amalekites and Canaanites who lived there came down and attacked them, beating them down all the way to Hormah.