Numbers 14:35

35 I the Lord have spoken, Surely will I do thus to this evil congregation that has risen up together against me: in this wilderness they shall be utterly consumed, and there they shall die.

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 ) .''

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FOOTNOTES:

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

Numbers 14:35 In-Context

33 And your sons shall be fed in the wilderness forty years, and they shall bear your fornication, until your carcases be consumed in the wilderness.

34 According to the number of the days during which ye spied the land, forty days, a day for a year, ye shall bear your sins forty years, and ye shall know my fierce anger.

35 I the Lord have spoken, Surely will I do thus to this evil congregation that has risen up together against me: in this wilderness they shall be utterly consumed, and there they shall die.

36 And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, and who came and murmured against it to the assembly so as to bring out evil words concerning the land, —

37 the men that spoke evil reports against the land, even died of the plague before the Lord.

Footnotes

• [a]. See ?p?s?stas?? 2. Cor 11. 28.