Numbers 14:29

29 in this desert your corpses will fall, and all your counted ones, according to all your number, from {twenty years old} and above who grumbled against me.

Numbers 14:29 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 14:29

Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness
They had wished they had died in it, ( Numbers 14:2 ) , and the Lord here declares they should, which is signified by the falling of their carcasses in it, or their bodies, which when dead fall to the ground, having no strength to support themselves:

and all that were numbered of you:
but a few months before this time, when their number was 603,550, ( Numbers 1:46 ) ;

according to your number from twenty years old and upward;
which is observed, as Jarchi thinks, to except the Levites, for they were not numbered with the other tribes; and when they were numbered by themselves, their number was taken from a month old and upwards; wherefore it need not be wondered at, if we find that there were of them who did not fall in the wilderness, but entered into the land of Canaan, as it is certain Eleazar the priest, the son of Aaron, did, ( Numbers 34:17 ) ( Joshua 14:1 ) ;

which have murmured against me;
which shows, that not the spies only, who caused the people to murmur, but the people themselves who murmured, and had been numbered, from twenty years old and upward, are the evil congregation the Lord thus threatened with death.

Numbers 14:29 In-Context

27 "How long [will I bear] this evil community who are grumbling against me? I have heard the grumbling of the {Israelites} which {they are making} against me.
28 Say to them, 'Surely as I live,' {declares} Yahweh, 'just as you spoke {in my hearing}, so I will do to you;
29 in this desert your corpses will fall, and all your counted ones, according to all your number, from {twenty years old} and above who grumbled against me.
30 You [yourselves] will not come into the land that {I swore by oath} to make you to dwell in it, but Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
31 But your little children, whom you said would be plunder, I will bring them, and they will know the land that you rejected.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Literally "a son of twenty years"
Scripture quotations marked (LEB) are from the Lexham English Bible. Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software. Lexham is a registered trademark of Logos Bible Software.