You will die in this desert. Every person who is 20 years old or older and was counted as one of my people will die. You complained against me, the Lord.
I will remove all the people that turned against me and sinned against me. I will remove those people from your homeland. They will never again come to the Land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”
Many years before, in the Sinai desert, Moses and Aaron the priest counted the people of Israel. But all those people were dead. None of those people were still alive.
Why? Because the Lord told those people of Israel that they would all die in the desert. The only two men who were left alive were Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
It was 38 years from the time we left Kadesh Barnea until the time we crossed Zered Valley. All the fighting men of that generation in our camp had died. The Lord had sworn (promised) that that would happen.