Exploring Canaan: Numbers 13–15

Stirred up by the scouts’ reports of Cannan, the Israelites response was to cry all night:

^14:2 Their voices rose in a great chorus of protest against Moses and Aaron. “If only we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness!” they complained.

God gave them what they asked for:

^14:28-29 Now tell them this: ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very things I heard you say. You will all drop dead in this wilderness! Because you complained against me, every one of you who is twenty years old or older and was included in the registration will die.

This started another 38 years of wandering in the desert, until the last of that generation died. The adults got exactly what they asked for: to die in the wilderness.