Numbers 32:13

13 And {Yahweh became angry}, and he made them wander in the desert forty years until the entire generation who did evil in the {sight of Yahweh} {had died}.

Numbers 32:13 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 32:13

And the Lord's anger was kindled against Israel
For murmuring against the report of the spies:

and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years;
for though it was but about thirty eight years from that time that they were in the wilderness, the round number of forty is given; and besides it includes the time of their first coming into it, which being reckoned, makes the complete number, within a few months: Kadesh, from whence the spies were sent, and whither they returned, and where the people murmured, and had this sentence pronounced on them, that they should not see the land of Canaan, but wander and fall in the wilderness, seems to have had the addition of Barnea made unto it on that account, which signifies the son of him that wandereth:

until all the generation which had done evil in the sight of the Lord
was consumed;
as they all were at this time when Moses spake these words.

Numbers 32:13 In-Context

11 'The men who went up from Egypt, from {those twenty years old} and above, will not see the land that I swore with an oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they have not wholly followed me,

12 except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, because they followed Yahweh wholly.'

13 And {Yahweh became angry}, and he made them wander in the desert forty years until the entire generation who did evil in the {sight of Yahweh} {had died}.

14 Behold, you stand in the place of your fathers, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more {Yahweh's fierce anger} against Israel.

15 If you turn from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness, and you would have destroyed all these people."

Footnotes

• [a]. Literally "Yahweh's nose became hot"
• [b]. Literally "eyes of Yahweh"
• [c]. Literally "had completed"