Why ¹  have you brought up the Lord’s community into this wilderness? So that ²  we and our cattle should die here?

So when we cried to the Lord, he heard our voice and sent a messenger, ¹  and has brought us up out of Egypt. Now ²  we are here in Kadesh, a town on the edge of your country. ³ 

And those men said to him, “We are ceremonially defiled by the dead body of a man; why are we kept back from offering the Lord’s offering at its appointed time among the Israelites?”

¹ Moses said to Hobab son of Reuel, the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law, ²  “We are journeying to the place about which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you.’ Come with us and we will treat you well, ³  for the Lord has promised good things ⁴  for Israel.”

but we will maintain ourselves in armed readiness ¹  and go before the Israelites until whenever we have brought them to their place. Our descendants will be living in fortified towns as a protection against ²  the inhabitants of the land.