Numbers 14:28

Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(28) As ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do unto you.—The Israelites had exclaimed in their sinful murmuring against God, “Would God we had died in the wilderness” (Numbers 14:2); and God declares in His wrathful displeasure that the judgment which they had thus invoked should be inflicted upon them, and that their carcases should fall in the wilderness.

Benson Commentary

Numbers 14:28-30. As ye have spoken — When you wickedly wished you might die in the wilderness. To make you dwell — That is, your nation; for God did not swear to do so to these particular persons.

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

Render: And now the Amalekites and the Canaanites are dwelling (or abiding) in the valley: wherefore turn you, etc. (that so ye be not smitten before them). The Amalekites were the nomad bands that roved through the open pastures of the plain Numbers 14:45 : the Canaanites, a term here taken in its wider sense, were the Amorites of the neighboring cities (compare Numbers 14:45 with Deuteronomy 1:44), who probably lived in league with the Amalekites.

Tomorrow - Not necessarily the next day, but an idiom for "hereafter," "henceforward" (compare the marginal reading in Exodus 13:14; Joshua 4:6).

By the way of the Red sea - That is, apparently, by the eastern or Elanitic gulf.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

25. (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley)—that is, on the other side of the Idumean mountain, at whose base they were then encamped. Those nomad tribes had at that time occupied it with a determination to oppose the further progress of the Hebrew people. Hence God gave the command that they seek a safe and timely retreat into the desert, to escape the pursuit of those resolute enemies, to whom, with their wives and children, they would fall a helpless prey because they had forfeited the presence and protection of God. This verse forms an important part of the narrative and should be freed from the parenthetical form which our English translators have given it.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

As you wickedly wished you might have died in the wilderness, Numbers 14:2, I will bring your imprecations upon your heads.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Say unto them, as truly as I live, saith the Lord,.... The form of an oath, as in Numbers 14:21,

as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you; what they had wished for, and expressed in the hearing of the Lord, he threatens them should be their case.

Geneva Study Bible

Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

28. as ye have spoken] i.e. in Numbers 14:2.

Numbers 14:28

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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 Exodus 6:8) to lead them, with the sole exception of Caleb and Joshua. But their children, who, as they said, would be a prey (Numbers 14:3), them Jehovah would bring, and they should learn to know the land which the others had despised.