"Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he
sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness....

"Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the
greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt
even until now.

"And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word."

Had Moses left the matter there it would not have been so bad, but he
could not contain his vexation, because his staff had not divined his
wishes. Those men, though they had done their strict duty only, must be
punished, so he thought, to maintain his ascendancy.

Of the twelve "spies" whom Moses had sent into Canaan to report to him,
ten had incurred his bitter animosity because they failed to render him
such a report as would sustain him before the people in making the
campaign of invasion to which he felt himself pledged, and on the success
of which his reputation depended. Of these ten men, Moses, to judge by the
character of his demands upon the Lord, thought it incumbent on him to
make an example, in order to sustain his own credit.

To simply exclude these ten spies from Palestine, as he proposed to do
with the rest of the congregation, would hardly be enough, for the rest of
the Hebrews were, at most, passive, but these ten had wilfully ignored the
will of Moses, or, as he expressed it, of the Lord. Therefore it was the
Lord's duty, as Moses saw it, to punish them. And this Moses proposed that
the Lord should do in a prompt and awful manner: the lesson being pointed
by the immunity of Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who had had the wit to