for them forever.” This was not intended as a religious prohibition, but as a prohibition barring them from it. Allah, exalted is He, revealed to Moses: “[By Me you have sworn] (1): I shall certainly forbid them from entering the Holy Land, except for My two servants Joshua and Caleb. I shall make them wander in this wilderness for forty years, [wandering] (2) one year for every day of the days during which you were held back, and I shall cast their corpses into these barren lands. As for their children, who had not known evil, they shall enter it.” This is the meaning of His saying, exalted is He: “It is forbidden to them for forty years, during which they will wander”—that is, they will roam in confusion—“through the land. So do not grieve over the defiantly disobedient people”; that is, do not grieve over people such as these.

They remained for forty years within an area of six farsakhs, though they numbered six hundred thousand fighting men. Each day they would travel earnestly, but by evening they would find themselves in the very place from which they had departed.

It was said that Moses and Aaron, peace be upon them, were not among them. The sounder view is that they were among them, but no punishment befell them; the punishment was only for those people. Everyone who entered the wilderness and was over twenty years old died there, except Joshua and Caleb. None of those who had said, “We will never enter it,” ever entered Jericho. Then, when they had perished, the forty years had passed, and a new generation had grown up from among their descendants, they went forth to fight the giants.

Scholars differed concerning who undertook that war and through whose hand the conquest came about. Some said: Moses conquered Jericho, with Joshua commanding his vanguard. Moses, peace be upon him, marched against them with those of the Children of Israel who remained. Joshua entered it and fought the giants; then Moses, peace be upon him, entered it and remained there for as long as Allah, exalted is He, willed. Thereafter Allah, exalted is He, took him to Himself, and no one knows the location of his grave. This is the soundest of the views, since the scholars agree that Moses, peace be upon him, killed Og son of Anak.

Others said that Joshua alone fought the giants, and that he did not march against them until after Moses, peace be upon him, had died. [They said: Moses died] (3) along with Aaron in the wilderness.