Numbers 14:34

34 In keeping with the forty days you spied out the land, you shall bear your guilt forty years—a year for each day—and you will experience My alienation.

Numbers 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.

Numbers 14:34 In-Context

32 As for you, however, your bodies will fall in this wilderness.

33 Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness until the last of your bodies lies in the wilderness.

34 In keeping with the forty days you spied out the land, you shall bear your guilt forty years—a year for each day—and you will experience My alienation.

35 I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this entire wicked congregation, which has conspired against Me. They will meet their end in the wilderness, and there they will die.”

36 So the men Moses had sent to spy out the land, who had returned and made the whole congregation grumble against him by bringing out a bad report about the land—