Numbers 14:13

13 And Moses said to the Lord, [The] Egyptians hear not, from whose middle thou leddest out this people, (And Moses said to the Lord, But then the Egyptians, from whose midst thou leddest out these people, shall hear of it,)

Numbers 14:13 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 14:13

And Moses said unto the Lord
In an abrupt manner, as the following words show, his mind being greatly disturbed and distressed by the above threatening,

then the Egyptians shall hear [it];
that the Lord had smitten the Israelites with the pestilence; the Targum of Jonathan interprets it of the children of the Egyptians who were suffocated in the sea:

for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;
they were once sojourners among them, and slaves unto them, and they were delivered from them by the mighty hand of the Lord upon the Egyptians, destroying their firstborn; and therefore when they shall hear that the Israelites were all destroyed at once by a pestilence in the wilderness, it will be a pleasure to them, as follows.

Numbers 14:13 In-Context

11 And the Lord said to Moses, How long shall this people backbite me, or mis-deem me? How long shall they not believe to me, in (spite of) all the signs which I have done before them? (And the Lord said to Moses, How long shall these people backbite me, or mis-judge me? How long shall they not believe me, or not trust in me, in spite of all the miracles which I have done before them?)

12 Therefore I shall smite them with pestilence, and I shall waste them; soothly I shall make thee prince upon a greater folk, and stronger than is this. (And so I shall strike them with a pestilence, or a plague, and I shall destroy them; and then I shall make thee the leader of a greater, and of a stronger, nation than these people be.)

13 And Moses said to the Lord, [The] Egyptians hear not, from whose middle thou leddest out this people, (And Moses said to the Lord, But then the Egyptians, from whose midst thou leddest out these people, shall hear of it,)

14 and (they shall tell it to) the dwellers of this land, which heard that thou, Lord, art in this people (who have heard that thou, Lord, art with these people), and art seen face to face, and that thy cloud defendeth them, and that thou goest before them in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night,

15 that thou hast slain so great a multitude as (if they be just) one man, and (then they shall) say,