These [are] the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain opposite Suph, between Paran, Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab.
Now it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first [day] of the month, [that] Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the LORD had given him as commandments to them,
'Turn and take your journey, and go to the mountains of the Amorites, to all the neighboring [places] in the plain, in the mountains and in the lowland, in the South and on the seacoast, to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the River Euphrates.
'See, I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers -- to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -- to give to them and their descendants after them.'
"So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and knowledgeable men, and made them heads over you, leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, leaders of tens, and officers for your tribes.
"Then I commanded your judges at that time, saying, 'Hear [the cases] between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the stranger who is with him.
'You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great; you shall not be afraid in any man's presence, for the judgment [is] God's. The case that is too hard for you, bring to me, and I will hear it.'
" So we departed from Horeb, and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw on the way to the mountains of the Amorites, as the LORD our God had commanded us. Then we came to Kadesh Barnea.
'Look, the LORD your God has set the land before you; go up [and] possess [it,] as the LORD God of your fathers has spoken to you; do not fear or be discouraged.'
"And everyone of you came near to me and said, 'Let us send men before us, and let them search out the land for us, and bring back word to us of the way by which we should go up, and of the cities into which we shall come.'
"They also took [some] of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought [it] down to us; and they brought back word to us, saying, '[It is] a good land which the LORD our God is giving us.'
"and you complained in your tents, and said, 'Because the LORD hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.
'Where can we go up? Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, "The people [are] greater and taller than we; the cities [are] great and fortified up to heaven; moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there." '
'and in the wilderness where you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place.'
"who went in the way before you to search out a place for you to pitch your tents, to show you the way you should go, in the fire by night and in the cloud by day.
'except Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and his children I am giving the land on which he walked, because he wholly followed the LORD.'
'Moreover your little ones and your children, who you say will be victims, who today have no knowledge of good and evil, they shall go in there; to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.
" Then you answered and said to me, 'We have sinned against the LORD; we will go up and fight, just as the LORD our God commanded us.' And when everyone of you had girded on his weapons of war, you were ready to go up into the mountain.