15. If you kill this entire people at once, then the nations that have heard of your fame will say,
16. ‘Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to them, he killed them in the wilderness.’
17. So now, let the power of my Lord be great, just as you have said,
18. ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in loyal love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children until the third and fourth generations.’
19. Please forgive the iniquity of this people according to your great loyal love, just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt even until now.”
20. Then the Lord said, “I have forgiven them as you asked.
21. But truly, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord.
22. For all the people have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have tempted me now these ten times, and have not obeyed me,
23. they will by no means see the land that I swore to their fathers, nor will any of them who despised me see it.
24. Only my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit and has followed me fully – I will bring him into the land where he had gone, and his descendants will possess it.
25. (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites were living in the valleys.) Tomorrow, turn and journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.”
26. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron:
27. “How long must I bear with this evil congregation that murmurs against me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites that they murmured against me.
28. Say to them, ‘As I live, says the Lord, I will surely do to you just what you have spoken in my hearing.
29. Your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness – all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me.
30. You will by no means enter into the land where I swore to settle you. The only exceptions are Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
31. But I will bring in your little ones, whom you said would become victims of war, and they will enjoy the land that you have despised.