Numbers 14:13

13 But Moses said to the LORD, "What if the Egyptians hear about it? (You used your power to take these people away from them.)

Numbers 14:13 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 14:13

And Moses said unto the Lord
In an abrupt manner, as the following words show, his mind being greatly disturbed and distressed by the above threatening,

then the Egyptians shall hear [it];
that the Lord had smitten the Israelites with the pestilence; the Targum of Jonathan interprets it of the children of the Egyptians who were suffocated in the sea:

for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;
they were once sojourners among them, and slaves unto them, and they were delivered from them by the mighty hand of the Lord upon the Egyptians, destroying their firstborn; and therefore when they shall hear that the Israelites were all destroyed at once by a pestilence in the wilderness, it will be a pleasure to them, as follows.

Numbers 14:13 In-Context

11 The LORD said to Moses, "How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to trust me in spite of all the miraculous signs I have done among them?

12 I'll strike them with a plague, I'll destroy them, and I'll make you into a nation larger and stronger than they are."

13 But Moses said to the LORD, "What if the Egyptians hear about it? (You used your power to take these people away from them.)

14 What if the Egyptians tell the people who live in this land? LORD, they have already heard that you are with these people, that they have seen you with their own eyes, that your column of smoke stays over them, and that you go ahead of them in a column of smoke by day and in a column of fire by night.

15 But if you kill all these people at the same time, then the nations who have heard these reports about you will say,