Numbers 14:35

35 For as I spake, so I shall do to all this worst multitude, that rose (up) together against me; it shall fail (they shall fail), and shall die in this wilderness.

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 ) .''

FOOTNOTES:

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

Numbers 14:35 In-Context

33 your sons shall be walkers-about in the desert by forty years, and they shall bear your fornication, till the carrions of their fathers be wasted in (the) desert, (your sons shall be wanderers in this wilderness for forty years, and they shall bear your punishment, until their fathers? corpses be wasted in this wilderness,)
34 by the number of forty days, in which ye beheld the land; a year shall be reckoned for a day, and by forty years ye shall receive (the penalty for) your wickedness, or be punished for your grouching, and ye shall know my vengeance. (yea, for the forty days in which ye looked the land over, a year shall be reckoned for a day, and so for forty years ye shall receive the penalty for your wickedness, and shall be punished for your grumbling, and then ye shall know my vengeance.)
35 For as I spake, so I shall do to all this worst multitude, that rose (up) together against me; it shall fail (they shall fail), and shall die in this wilderness.
36 Therefore all the men which Moses had sent to see the land, and which turned again, and made all the multitude to grouch against him, and depraved the land, (And so all the men whom Moses had sent to look over the land, and returned, and then had made all the multitude to grumble against him, and to despise the land,)
37 that it was evil, were dead, and smitten in the sight of the Lord . (by saying that it was evil, were then struck by the Lord with a pestilence, or a plague, and died.)
Copyright © 2001 by Terence P. Noble. For personal use only.