Bamidbar 14:34

34 After the number of the days in which ye explored HaAretz, even arba’im, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even arba’im shanah, and ye shall know My Tenu’a (Opposition).

Bamidbar 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.

Bamidbar 14:34 In-Context

32 But as for you, your corpses, they shall fall in this midbar.

33 And your banim shall wander [wandering ro’im] in the midbar arba’im shanah, and bear [the penalty of] your whoredoms [zenut, spiritual disloyalty and rebellion], until the last of your corpses lies in the midbar.

34 After the number of the days in which ye explored HaAretz, even arba’im, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even arba’im shanah, and ye shall know My Tenu’a (Opposition).

35 I, Hashem, have spoken, I will surely do it unto this Kol HaEdah, that are gathered together against Me: in this midbar they shall come to an end, and there they shall die.

36 And the anashim, which Moshe sent to spy out the land, who returned, and made Kol HaEdah to murmur against him, the ones spreading a dibbah (bad report, slander) about HaAretz,