Joshua 5:6

6 This was because the Israelites journeyed forty years in the desert until the whole nation died off. These were the men old enough to fight who went out from Egypt and who hadn't obeyed the LORD. The LORD had pledged to them never to show them the land that the LORD had pledged to their ancestors to give us. It is a land full of milk and honey.

Joshua 5:6 Meaning and Commentary

Joshua 5:6

For the children of Israel walked forty years in the
wilderness
Wanting a few days, the round number is given: not forty two, as the Septuagint version:

till all the people [that were] men of war, which came out of Egypt,
were consumed;
all that were above twenty years of age, excepting Joshua and Caleb:

because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord;
but murmured against him, and against his servants, and particularly against Aaron, being the high priest; and chiefly because of the report of the spies, and their murmurs then, which so incensed the Lord against them, that he threatened them with an entire consumption of their carcasses, and which accordingly was fulfilled, to which the following clause refers:

unto whom the Lord sware, that he would not show them the land which
the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that
floweth with milk and honey;
see ( Numbers 14:23 Numbers 14:24 ) .

Joshua 5:6 In-Context

4 This is the reason Joshua did so: All the people who went out of Egypt, that is, all the men who were soldiers, had died in the desert on the way after they left Egypt.

5 All the people who went out were circumcised. But none of the people born in the desert on the way after they had left Egypt had been circumcised.

6 This was because the Israelites journeyed forty years in the desert until the whole nation died off. These were the men old enough to fight who went out from Egypt and who hadn't obeyed the LORD. The LORD had pledged to them never to show them the land that the LORD had pledged to their ancestors to give us. It is a land full of milk and honey.

7 Joshua circumcised their children, the ones the LORD had set in their place. They were uncircumcised because they hadn't been circumcised on the way.

8 After the whole nation had undergone circumcision, they remained in the camp until they got well again.