Numbers 14:35

35 I the Lord have spoken this; I will surely do so to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.' "

Numbers 14:35 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 14:35

I the Lord have said
Determined, resolved on doing what I have declared, and again repeat it; the decree is absolute and peremptory, and will never be revoked: I will surely do it to all this evil congregation, that are gathered
together against me;
against his ministers, Moses the chief magistrate, and Aaron the high priest; and this is interpreted gathering, conspiring, and rebelling against the Lord himself, on account of which they might be truly called an evil congregation, and therefore it was a determined point with him to destroy them: in this wilderness they shall be consumed;
by wasting diseases: and there they shall die;
as they wished they might, ( Numbers 14:22 ) ; with respect to which this was so often repeated, ( Exodus 16:3 ) ; and which the Jews interpret not only of a corporeal death, but of an eternal one; for they say ^F3

``the generation of the wilderness (of those that died there) have no part in the world to come, nor shall stand in judgment, as it is said, "in this wilderness" ( Numbers 14:35 ) .''

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FOOTNOTES:

F3 Misn. Sanhedrin, c. 11. sect. 3.

Numbers 14:35 In-Context

33 And your sons shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and bear the brunt of your infidelity, until your carcasses are consumed in the wilderness.

34 According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know My rejection.

35 I the Lord have spoken this; I will surely do so to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.' "

36 Now the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation complain against him by bringing a bad report of the land,

37 those very men who brought the evil report about the land, died by the plague before the Lord.