Numbers 14:35

35 I, the LORD, have spoken! I will certainly do these things to every member of the community who has conspired against me. They will be destroyed here in this wilderness, and here they will 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 children will be like shepherds, wandering in the wilderness for forty years. In this way, they will pay for your faithlessness, until the last of you lies dead in the wilderness.

34 “‘Because your men explored the land for forty days, you must wander in the wilderness for forty years—a year for each day, suffering the consequences of your sins. Then you will discover what it is like to have me for an enemy.’

35 I, the LORD, have spoken! I will certainly do these things to every member of the community who has conspired against me. They will be destroyed here in this wilderness, and here they will die!”

36 The ten men Moses had sent to explore the land—the ones who incited rebellion against the LORD with their bad report—

37 were struck dead with a plague before the LORD .