Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

Sentence upon the Murmuring Congregation. - After the Lord had thus declared to Moses in general terms His resolution to punish the incorrigible people, and not suffer them to come to Canaan, He proceeded to tell him what announcement he was to make to the people. Num 14:27 This announcement commences in a tone of anger, with an aposiopesis, "How long this evil congregation" (sc., "shall I forgive it," the simplest plan being to supply אשּׂא, as Rosenmller suggests, from Num 14:18), "that they murmur against Me?" Num 14:28-31 Jehovah swore that it should happen to the murmurers as they had spoken. Their corpses should fall in the desert, even all who had been numbered, from twenty years old and upwards: they should not see the land into which Jehovah had lifted up His hand (see at Exo 6:8) to lead them, with the sole exception of Caleb and Joshua. But their children, who, as they said, would be a prey (Num 14:3), them Jehovah would bring, and they should learn to know the land which the others had despised. Num 14:32-33 "As for you, your carcases will fall in this wilderness. But your sons will be pasturing (i.e., will lead a restless shepherd life) in the desert forty years, and bear your whoredom (i.e., endure the consequences of your faithless apostasy; see Exo 34:16), until your corpses are finished in the desert," i.e., till you have all passed away. Num 14:34 "After the number of the forty days that he have searched the land, shall ye bear your iniquity, (reckoning) a day for a year, and know My turning away from you," or תּנוּאה, abalienatio, from נוא (Num 32:7). Num 14:35 As surely as Jehovah had spoken this, would He do it to that evil congregation, to those who had allied themselves against Him (נועד, to bind themselves together, to conspire; Num 16:11; Num 27:3). There is no ground whatever for questioning the correctness of the statement, that the spies had travelled through Canaan for forty days, or regarding this as a so-called round number - that is to say, as unhistorical. And if this number is firmly established, there is also no ground for disputing the forty years' sojourn of the people in the wilderness, although the period during which the rebellious generation, consisting of those who were numbered at Sinai, died out, was actually thirty-eight years, reaching from the autumn of the second year after their departure from Egypt to the middle of the fortieth year of their wanderings, and terminating with the fresh numbering (ch. 26) that was undertaken after the death of Aaron, and took place on the first of the fifth month of the fortieth year (Num 20:23., compared with Num 33:38). Instead of these thirty-eight years, the forty years of the sojourn in the desert are placed in connection with the forty days of the spies, because the people had frequently fallen away from God, and been punished in consequence, even during the year and a half before their rejection; and in this respect the year and a half could be combined with the thirty-eight years which followed into one continuous period, during which they bore their iniquity, to set distinctly before the minds of the disobedient people the contrast between that peaceful dwelling in the promised land which they had forfeited, and the restless wandering in the desert, which had been imposed upon them as a punishment, and to impress upon them the causal connection between sin and suffering. "Every year that passed, and was deducted from the forty years of punishment, was a new and solemn exhortation to repent, as it called to mind the occasion of their rejection" (Kurtz). When Knobel observes, on the other hand, that "it is utterly improbable that all who came out of Egypt (that is to say, all who were twenty years old and upward when they came out) should have fallen in the desert, with the exception of two, and that there should have been no men found among the Israelites when they entered Canaan who were more than sixty years of age," the express statement, that on the second numbering there was not a man among those that were numbered who had been included in the numbering at Sinai, except Joshua and Caleb (Num 26:64.), is amply sufficient to overthrow this "improbability" as an unfounded fancy. Nor is this statement rendered at all questionable by the fact, that "Aaron's son Eleazar, who entered Canaan with Joshua" (Jos 14:1, etc.), was most likely more than twenty years old at the time of his consecration at Sinai, as the Levites were not qualified for service till their thirtieth or twenty-fifth year. For, in the first place, the regulation concerning the Levites' age of service is not to be applied without reserve to the priests also, so that we could infer from this that the sons of Aaron must have been at least twenty-five or thirty years old when they were consecrated; and besides this, the priests do not enter into the question at all, for the tribe of Levi was excepted from the numbering in ch. 1, and therefore Aaron's sons were not included among the persons numbered, who were sentenced to die in the wilderness. Still less does it follow from Jos 24:7 and Jdg 2:7, where it is stated that, after the conquest of Canaan, there were many still alive who had been eye-witnesses of the wonders of God in Egypt, that they must have been more than twenty years old when they came out of Egypt; for youths from ten to nineteen years of age would certainly have been able to remember such miracles as these, even after the lapse of forty or fifty years. Num 14:36-38 But for the purpose of giving to the whole congregation a practical proof of the solemnity of the divine threatening of punishment, the spies who had induced the congregation to revolt, through their evil report concerning the inhabitants of Canaan, were smitten by a "stroke before Jehovah," i.e., by a sudden death, which proceeded in a visible manner from Jehovah Himself, whilst Joshua and Caleb remained alive.