Numbers 14:33

33 and your children will wander about in the desert for forty years bearing the consequences of your prostitutions until the desert eats up your carcasses.

Numbers 14:33 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 14:33

And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years,
&c.] Or "feed" ^F2, as shepherds, who go from place to place, and seek fresh pasture for their sheep; it being the custom of a shepherd, as Aben Ezra observes, not to stand or rest in a place; and so like sheep grazing in a wilderness, where they have short commons, and wander about in search, of better. These forty years are to be reckoned from their coming out of Egypt, from whence they had now been come about a year and a half: and bear your whoredoms;
the punishment of their idolatries, which are frequently signified by this phrase, and particularly of the idolatry of the calf, which God threatened to punish whenever he visited for sin, ( Exodus 32:34 ) ; and of other sins, as their murmurings for it was on account of them their children wandered so long in the wilderness, and were kept out of the possession of the land of Canaan: until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness;
everyone of them be consumed by death, save those before excepted, ( Numbers 14:30 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F2 (Myer wyhy) "erunt pascentes", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius, Junius & Tremellius; "pascent", Tigurine version, Piscator.

Numbers 14:33 In-Context

31 But your little ones, who you said would be taken as booty - them I will bring in. They will know the land you have rejected.

32 But you, your carcasses will fall in this desert;

33 and your children will wander about in the desert for forty years bearing the consequences of your prostitutions until the desert eats up your carcasses.

34 It will be a year for every day you spent reconnoitering the land that you will bear the consequences of your offenses - forty days, forty years. Then you will know what it means to oppose me!

35 I, ADONAI, have spoken.' I will certainly do this to this whole evil community who have assembled together against me - they will be destroyed in this desert and die there."