So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command ¹  of the Lord. All of them were leaders ²  of the Israelites.

They came back ¹  to Moses and Aaron and to the whole community of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. ²  They reported ³  to the whole community and showed the fruit of the land.

And all the Israelites murmured ¹  against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died ²  in the land of Egypt, or if only we had perished ³  in this wilderness!

‘Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to them, he killed them in the wilderness.’

(Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites were living in the valleys.) ¹  Tomorrow, turn and journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.”

Your dead bodies ¹  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.

I, the Lord, have said, “I will surely do so to all this evil congregation that has gathered together against me. In this wilderness they will be finished, and there they will die!”’”

¹ Then the entire community of Israel ²  entered the wilderness of Zin in the first month, ³  and the people stayed in Kadesh. ⁴  Miriam died and was buried there. ⁵ 

Why ¹  have you brought up the Lord’s community into this wilderness? So that ²  we and our cattle should die here?

From there they moved on and camped on the other side of the Arnon, in the wilderness that extends from the regions ¹  of the Amorites, for Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites.

The well which the princes ¹  dug, which the leaders of the people opened with their scepters and their staffs.” And from the wilderness they traveled to Mattanah;

For the Lord had said of them, “They will surely die in the wilderness.” And there was not left a single man of them, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

For if you turn away from following him, he will once again abandon ¹  them in the wilderness, and you will be the reason for their destruction.” ² 

your southern border ¹  will extend from the wilderness of Zin along the Edomite border, and your southern border will run eastward to the extremity of the Salt Sea,

and in the desert, where you saw him ¹  carrying you along like a man carries his son. This he did everywhere you went until you came to this very place.”

But the Lord told me: “Tell them this: ‘Do not go up and fight, because I will not be with you and you will be defeated by your enemies.’”

Then we turned and set out toward the desert land on the way to the Red Sea ¹  just as the Lord told me to do, detouring around Mount Seir for a long time.

and who brought you through the great, fearful desert of venomous serpents ¹  and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow ²  from a flint rock and

fed you in the desert with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you ¹  and eventually bring good to you.

Every place you set your foot ¹  will be yours; your border will extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the River (that is, the Euphrates) as far as the Mediterranean Sea. ²