Joshua 5:6

6 The Israelites had moved about in the desert for forty years. During that time all the fighting men who had left Egypt had died because they had not obeyed the Lord. So the Lord swore they would not see the land he had promised their ancestors to give them, a fertile land.

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 why Joshua circumcised the men: After the Israelites left Egypt, all the men old enough to serve in the army died in the desert on the way out of Egypt.

5 The men who had come out of Egypt had been circumcised, but none of those who were born in the desert on the trip from Egypt had been circumcised.

6 The Israelites had moved about in the desert for forty years. During that time all the fighting men who had left Egypt had died because they had not obeyed the Lord. So the Lord swore they would not see the land he had promised their ancestors to give them, a fertile land.

7 Their sons took their places. But none of the sons born on the trip from Egypt had been circumcised, so Joshua circumcised them.

8 After all the Israelites had been circumcised, they stayed in camp until they were healed.