Numbers 14:34

34 After the number of the days in which ye spied out the land, even forty days, each day for a year, ye shall bear your iniquities forty years, and ye shall know my reason for annulling my promise.

Numbers 14:34 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 14:34

After the number of days in which ye searched the land,
[even] forty days
For so long they were searching it, ( Numbers 13:25 ) ; each day for a year;
reckoning each day for a year, forty days for forty years, as in ( Ezekiel 4:6 ) ; shall ye bear your iniquities, [even] forty years:
which number is given, being a round one, otherwise it was but thirty eight years and a half ere they were all cut off, and their children entered the land: and ye shall know my breach of promise;
God never makes any breach of promise; his covenant he will not break, nor alter what is gone out of his lips; men break their promises, and transgress the covenant they have made with him, but he never breaks his, ( Psalms 89:34 ) ; this should rather be rendered only, "ye shall know my breach"; experience a breach made upon them by him, upon their persons and families by consuming them in the wilderness: the Targum of Jonathan is,

``and ye shall know what ye have murmured against me;''

this same word is used in the plural in ( Job 33:10 ) , and is by the Targum rendered "murmurings" or "complaints"; and so the sense is, ye shall know by sad experience the evil of complaining and murmuring against me. The Vulgate Latin version is,

``ye shall know my vengeance;''

and so the Septuagint,

``ye shall know the fury of my anger''

which give the sense, though not a literal version of the words.

Numbers 14:34 In-Context

32 But as for you, your carcasses, they shall fall in this wilderness.

33 And your children shall be shepherded in the wilderness forty years and bear your fornications until your carcasses are wasted in the wilderness.

34 After the number of the days in which ye spied out the land, even forty days, each day for a year, ye shall bear your iniquities forty years, and ye shall know my reason for annulling my promise.

35 I, the LORD, have spoken, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation that are gathered together against me; in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.

36 And the men, whom Moses had sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation to murmur against him by bringing up a slander upon the land,