The Wilderness Years

Bring you men of wisedome and of vnderstanding, and knowen among your tribes, and I will make them rulers ouer you:

Then ye answered me and said, The thing is good that thou hast commanded vs to doe.

So I tooke the chiefe of your tribes wise and knowen men, and made them rulers ouer you, captaines ouer thousands, and captaines ouer hundreds, and captaines ouer fiftie, and captaines ouer tenne, and officers among your tribes.

And I charged your iudges that same time, saying, Heare the controuersies betweene your brethren, and iudge righteously betweene euery man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him.

Ye shall haue no respect of person in iudgement, but shall heare the small aswell as the great: yee shall not feare the face of man: for the iudgement is Gods: and the cause that is too hard for you, bring vnto me, and I will heare it.

Also I commanded you the same time all the things which ye should doe.

Then we departed from Horeb, and went through all that great and terrible wildernesse (as yee haue seene) by the way of the mountaine of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded vs: and we came to Kadesh-barnea.

And I saide vnto you, Yee are come vnto the mountaine of the Amorites, which the Lord our God doeth giue vnto vs.

Beholde, the Lord thy God hath layde the land before thee: go vp and possesse it, as the Lord the God of thy fathers hath saide vnto thee: feare not, neither be discouraged.

Then ye came vnto me euery one, and said, We wil send men before vs, to search vs out the land and to bring vs word againe, what way we must go vp by, and vnto what cities we shall come.

So the saying pleased me well, and I tooke twelue men of you, of euery tribe one.

Who departed, and went vp into the mountaine, and came vnto the riuer Eshcol, and searched out the land.

And tooke of the fruite of the land in their hands, and brought it vnto vs, and brought vs worde againe, and sayd, It is a good land, which the Lord our God doeth giue vs.

Notwithstanding, ye would not go vp, but were disobedient vnto the commandement of the Lord your God,

And murmured in your tentes, and sayd, Because the Lord hated vs, therefore hath hee brought vs out of the land of Egypt, to deliuer vs into the hand of the Amorites, and to destroy vs.

Whither shall we go vp? our brethren haue discouraged our hearts, saying, The people is greater, and taller then we: the cities are great and walled vp to heauen: and moreouer we haue seene the sonnes of the Anakims there.

But I sayd vnto you, Dread not, nor be afrayd of them.

The Lord your God, who goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did vnto you in Egypt before your eyes,

And in the wildernesse, where thou hast seene how the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doeth beare his sonne, in all the way which ye haue gone, vntill ye came vnto this place.

Yet for all this ye did not beleeue the Lord your God,

Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tentes in, in fire by night, that ye might see what way to goe, and in a cloude by day.

Then the Lord heard the voyce of your wordes, and was wroth, and sware, saying,

Surely there shall not one of these men of this froward generation, see that good land, which I sware to giue vnto your fathers,

Saue Caleb the sonne of Iephunneh: he shall see it, and to him will I giue the land that he hath troden vpon, and to his children, because he hath constantly followed the Lord.

Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not goe in thither,