Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/1124

 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.

verses 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.

Verse 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).

Verse 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