Numbers 14:23

Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

14:20-35 The Lord granted the prayer of Moses so far as not at once to destroy the congregation. But disbelief of the promise forbids the benefit. Those who despise the pleasant land shall be shut out of it. The promise of God should be fulfilled to their children. They wished to die in the wilderness; God made their sin their ruin, took them at their word, and their carcases fell in the wilderness. They were made to groan under the burden of their own sin, which was too heavy for them to bear. Ye shall know my breach of promise, both the causes of it, that it is procured by your sin, for God never leaves any till they first leave him; and the consequences of it, that will produce your ruin. But your little ones, now under twenty years old, which ye, in your unbelief, said should be a prey, them will I bring in. God will let them know that he can put a difference between the guilty and the innocent, and cut them off without touching their children. Thus God would not utterly take away his loving kindness.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

These ten times - Ten is the number which imports completeness. Compare Genesis 31:7. The sense is that the measure of their provocation was now full: the day of grace was at last over. However, some enumerate 10 different occasions on which the people had tempted God since the exodus.

Psalm 90, which is entitled "a Prayer of Moses," has been most appropriately regarded as a kind of dirge upon those sentenced thus awfully by God to waste away in the wilderness.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

22. ten times—very frequently.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers,.... Not possess and enjoy the land of Canaan, which the Lord by an oath had promised their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give it to their seed; and now he swears that these men, who had so often tempted him, and been disobedient to him, should not inherit it; so the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem take it for an oath; see Hebrews 3:11,

neither shall any of them that provoked me see it; that provoked him by the ill report they had brought of the land, by their unbelief, by their murmurings, and mutiny.

Geneva Study Bible

Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 23. - Surely they shall not see. אִםאּיּרְאוּ, "if they shall see," according to the usual Hebrew idiom. Cf. Psalm 107:11 (Septuagint), Hebrews 4:3, ὡς ὤμοσα... εἰ εἰσελεύσονται. Numbers 14:23

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In answer to this importunate prayer, the Lord promised forgiveness, namely, the preservation of the nation, but not the remission of the well-merited punishment. At the rebellion at Sinai, He had postponed the punishment "till the day of His visitation" (Exodus 32:34). And that day had now arrived, as the people had carried their continued rebellion against the Lord to the furthest extreme, even to an open declaration of their intention to depose Moses, and return to Egypt under another leader, and thus had filled up the measure of their sins. "Nevertheless," added the Lord (Numbers 14:21, Numbers 14:22), "as truly as I live, and the glory of Jehovah will fill the whole earth, all the men who have seen My glory and My miracles...shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers." The clause, "all the earth," etc., forms an apposition to "as I live." Jehovah proves Himself to be living, by the fact that His glory fills the whole earth. But this was to take place, not, as Knobel, who mistakes the true connection of the different clauses, erroneously supposes, by the destruction of the whole of that generation, which would be talked of by all the world, but rather by the fact that, notwithstanding the sin and opposition of these men, He would still carry out His work of salvation to a glorious victory. The כּי in Numbers 14:22 introduces the substance of the oath, as in Isaiah 49:18; 1 Samuel 14:39; 1 Samuel 20:3; and according to the ordinary form of an oath, אם in Numbers 14:23 signifies "not." - "They have tempted Me now ten times." Ten is used as the number of completeness and full measure; and this answered to the actual fact, if we follow the Rabbins, and add to the murmuring (1) at the Red Sea, Exodus 14:11-12; (2) at Marah, Exodus 15:23; (3) in the wilderness of Sin, Exodus 16:2; (4) at Rephidim, Exodus 17:1; (5) at Horeb, Exodus 32; (6) at Tabeerah, Numbers 11:1; (7) at the graves of lust, Numbers 11:4.; and (8) here again at Kadesh, the twofold rebellion of certain individuals against the commandments of God at the giving of the manna (Exodus 16:20 and Exodus 16:27). The despisers of God should none of them see the promised land.