<p class="poetry">Remember the ancient days;p> <p class="poetry">bear in mind<n id="1" /> the years of past generations.<n id="2" />p> <p class="poetry">Ask your father and he will inform you,p> <p class="poetry">your elders, and they will tell you.p>

<p class="poetry">His people have been unfaithful<n id="1" /> to him;p> <p class="poetry">they have not acted like his children<n id="2" /> &#8211; this is their sin.<n id="3" />p> <p class="poetry">They are a perverse<n id="4" /> and deceitful generation.p>

Children of the third generation born to them<n id="1" /> may enter the assembly of the <sc>Lordsc>.p>

&#8220;Not a single person<n id="1" /> of this evil generation will see the good land that I promised to give to your ancestors!

So realize that the <sc>Lordsc> your God is the true God,<n id="1" /> the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully<n id="2" /> with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

A person of illegitimate birth<n id="1" /> may not enter the assembly of the <sc>Lordsc>; to the tenth generation no one related to him may do so.<n id="2" />p>

<p class="bodytext">An Ammonite or Moabite<n id="1" /> may not enter the assembly of the <sc>Lordsc>; to the tenth generation none of their descendants shall ever<n id="2" /> do so,<n id="3" />

<p class="poetry">He said, &#8220;I will reject them,<n id="1" />p> <p class="poetry">I will see what will happen to them;p> <p class="poetry">for they are a perverse generation,p> <p class="poetry">children<n id="2" /> who show no loyalty.p>

Now the length of time it took for us to go from Kadesh Barnea to the crossing of Wadi Zered was thirty-eight years, time for all the military men of that generation to die, just as the <sc>Lordsc> had vowed to them.

The generation to come &#8211; your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places &#8211; will see<n id="1" /> the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the <sc>Lordsc> has brought on it.