¹ Now the Lord ²  spoke ³  to Moses in the tent of meeting ⁴  in the wilderness ⁵  of Sinai ⁶  on the first day of the second month of the second year after ⁷  the Israelites ⁸  departed from the land of Egypt. ⁹  He said:

¹ The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out ²  of the land of Egypt:

Moses ¹  said, “Do not leave us, ²  because you know places for us to camp in the wilderness, and you could be our guide. ³ 

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

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!”’”

Is it a small thing ¹  that you have brought us up out of the land that flows with milk and honey, ²  to kill us in the wilderness? Now do you want to make yourself a prince ³  over us?

And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, for there is no bread or water, and we ¹  detest this worthless ²  food.”

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.

But there was not a man among these who had been ¹  among those numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest when they numbered the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai.

For ¹  in the wilderness of Zin when the community rebelled against me, you ²  rebelled against my command ³  to show me as holy ⁴  before their eyes over the water – the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.”

So the Lord’s anger was kindled against the Israelites, and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, until all that generation that had done wickedly before ¹  the Lord was finished. ² 

They traveled from Pi-hahiroth, ¹  and passed through the middle of the sea into the wilderness, and went three days’ journey in the wilderness of Etham, and camped in Marah.

These cities are Bezer, in the desert plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassehites.

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.

I have led you through the desert for forty years. Your clothing has not worn out ¹  nor have your sandals ²  deteriorated.

This is why Joshua had to circumcise them: All the men old enough to fight when they left Egypt died on the journey through the desert after they left Egypt. ¹ 

Now ¹  all the men ²  who left were circumcised, but all the sons ³  born on the journey through the desert after they left Egypt were uncircumcised.

Too bad for us! Who can deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all sorts of plagues in the desert!