7
Now why will you discourage the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Lord has given them?
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Thus your fathers did when I sent them away from Kadesh Barnea to see the land.
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For when they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, so that they did not go into the land which the Lord had given them.
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So the Lord's anger was aroused on that day, and He swore an oath, saying,
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'Surely none of the men who came up from Egypt, from twenty years old and above, shall see the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they have not wholly followed Me,
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except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have wholly followed the Lord.'
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So the Lord's anger was aroused against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was gone.
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And look! You have risen in your father's place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the Lord against Israel.
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For if you turn away from following Him, He will once again leave them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all these people."
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Then they came near to him and said: "We will build sheepfolds here for our livestock, and cities for our little ones,
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but we ourselves will be armed, ready to go before the children of Israel until we have brought them to their place; and our little ones will dwell in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land.