¹⁴ Each man who is registered, twenty years old or more, must give this contribution to the Lord.

²⁹ Your corpses will fall in this wilderness—all of you who were registered in the census, the entire number of you twenty years old or more^(A)—because you have complained about me.

¹¹ ‘Because they did not remain loyal to me,^(A) none of the men twenty years old or more who came up from Egypt will see the land I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob^(B)—

²⁴ These were the descendants of Levi by their ancestral families^[a]—the family heads, according to their registration by name in the headcount—twenty years old or more, who worked in the service of the Lord’s temple.^(A)

²⁷ for according to the last words of David, the Levites twenty years old or more were to be counted—

Rebuilding the Temple

⁸ In the second month of the second year after they arrived at God’s house in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Jeshua son of Jozadak,^(A) and the rest of their brothers, including the priests, the Levites, and all who had returned to Jerusalem from the captivity, began to build. They appointed the Levites who were twenty years old or more to supervise the work on the Lord’s house.^(B)