You complained among yourselves privately ¹  and said, “Because the Lord hates us he brought us from Egypt to deliver us over to the Amorites so they could destroy us!

But the Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, forcing us to do burdensome labor.

Then they took ¹  some of the produce of the land and carried it back down to us. They also brought a report to us, saying, “The land that the Lord our God is about to give us is good.”

He ¹  did not make this covenant with our ancestors ²  but with us, we who are here today, all of us living now.

He delivered us from there so that he could give us the land he had promised our ancestors.

Then we left Horeb and passed through all that immense, forbidding wilderness that you saw on the way to the Amorite hill country as the Lord our God had commanded us to do, finally arriving at Kadesh Barnea.

So all of you approached me and said, “Let’s send some men ahead of us to scout out the land and bring us back word as to how we should attack it and what the cities are like there.”