Claim. Because the Israelites accepted ten faithless reports against the two faithful ones (Joshua and Caleb) during the forty-day mission to spy out Canaan, the second national course collapsed and the planned twenty-one-month wilderness journey was prolonged to forty years — one year of wandering per day of spy-mission failure.
Elaboration. The third foundation-for-the-Tabernacle attempt was the forty-day spy mission (Num 13). With the Tabernacle, Ark, and tablets already constructed, Moses sent one leader from each tribe. Joshua and Caleb returned faithful; the other ten reported, “The people who dwell in the land are strong… we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers” (Num 13:28-33). The Israelites believed the ten over the two, tried to stone Joshua and Caleb, and called for a leader to take them back to Egypt (dp-2-the-providence-of-restoration-under-the-leadership-of-moses §2.2.2).
God’s judgment in Num 14:34: “According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years.” The day-for-year numerical-indemnity ratio is explicit in the text and is generalized by DP as a load-bearing principle: failed periods of dispensation must be paid back at the same numerical scale, scaled into a different unit.
The second national course thus ended, and the third national course began as a forty-year wilderness wandering to restore the failed forty-day spy mission. Only Joshua and Caleb, who had remained faithful, would enter Canaan among the original generation. This judgment also bound Moses to the wilderness: he would die outside Canaan after the rock-striking failure (cf. dp-moses-struck-rock-twice-the-second-sin-allowed-satan-to-claim-christ-rock). The internal/external Israelite distinction begins here — the younger generation, born during the wilderness, would inherit the entry.