Numbers 14:33

33 And your children will be wanderers in the waste land for forty years, undergoing punishment for your false ways, till your bodies become dust in the waste land.

Numbers 14:33 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 14:33

And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years,
&c.] Or "feed" ^F2, as shepherds, who go from place to place, and seek fresh pasture for their sheep; it being the custom of a shepherd, as Aben Ezra observes, not to stand or rest in a place; and so like sheep grazing in a wilderness, where they have short commons, and wander about in search, of better. These forty years are to be reckoned from their coming out of Egypt, from whence they had now been come about a year and a half: and bear your whoredoms;
the punishment of their idolatries, which are frequently signified by this phrase, and particularly of the idolatry of the calf, which God threatened to punish whenever he visited for sin, ( Exodus 32:34 ) ; and of other sins, as their murmurings for it was on account of them their children wandered so long in the wilderness, and were kept out of the possession of the land of Canaan: until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness;
everyone of them be consumed by death, save those before excepted, ( Numbers 14:30 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F2 (Myer wyhy) "erunt pascentes", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius, Junius & Tremellius; "pascent", Tigurine version, Piscator.

Numbers 14:33 In-Context

31 And your little ones, whom you said would come into strange hands, I will take in, and they will see the land which you would not have.

32 But as for you, your dead bodies will be stretched in this waste land.

33 And your children will be wanderers in the waste land for forty years, undergoing punishment for your false ways, till your bodies become dust in the waste land.

34 And as you went through the land viewing it for forty days, so for forty years, a year for every day, you will undergo punishment for your wrongdoing, and you will see that I am against you.

35 I the Lord have said it, and this I will certainly do to all this evil people who have come together against me: in this waste land destruction will come on them, and death will be their fate.