His prayer was heard. The Almighty assured him that the nation, as a nation, should be preserved, their name should not be utterly blotted out. But, save Joshua and Caleb, not one of that generation, which in spite of the wonders they had seen in Egypt and in the wilderness had refused to trust in God, should enter into the promised Land. For them, all hope of entry was cut off; every one, from twenty years old and upwards, should die; their carcases should lie bleaching in the wilderness (1 Cor. x. 5), while their children, whom they had deemed a certain prey to the Canaanites, should atone for their faithlessness by wandering forty years, a year for each day the spies had been engaged in searching out the land (Num. xiv. 33, 34). As an earnest of this judgment, the ten spies, who by their faithless despondency had been the primary cause of the mutiny, were struck with instant death, and the command was given to the rest of the host to _return into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea_. This announcement was received by the people with universal lamentation, and on the morrow they rose up, and in spite of the earnest exhortations of Moses (Deut. i. 42, 43), and the ominous circumstance that the Cloud had not removed from the Tabernacle, made a wild rush up the steep and difficult pass, probably _es-Sufah_, leading into the uplands of Southern Palestine, where they encountered the Amorites (Deut. i. 44), the _highlanders_ of the mountains, and their old enemies the Amalekites (Num. xiv. 45), by whom they were driven back, routed and discomfited as far as Hormah (Num. xiv. 20–45). CHAPTER II. _THE WANDERINGS. DEATH OF MIRIAM AND AARON._ NUMB. XV.–XXI. B.C. 1490–1451. AFTER this signal defeat it was clear that the sentence pronounced upon the existing generation was irrevocable, and the host remained for a considerable time at Kadesh (Deut. i. 46). During this period a formidable conspiracy broke out against the authority of Moses and Aaron. In their natural state of mortification at recent events, the people were now more than ever likely to lend a ready ear to those who whispered that under the auspices of any other than their present leaders, they might escape from their humiliating doom, and reach the goal of their hopes. Such fatal advisers soon appeared in the persons of KORAH, a Kohathite, of the tribe of Levi, and DATHAN, ABIRAM, and ON, of the tribe of Reuben. The former, jealous probably of the sacerdotal pre-eminence of the line of Amram, and the latter loth to see their tribe deprived of their ancestor’s right of primogeniture, conspired, it is thought, “to place Korah at the head of a priesthood chosen by popular election, and possibly to restore the tribe of Reuben to the rights of the firstborn, of which it had been deprived[116].”