26 Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 27 How long am I to put up with this evil people and their outcries against me? The words which they say against me have come to my ears. 28 Say to them, By my life, says the Lord, as certainly as your words have come to my ears, so certainly will I do this to you: 29 Your dead bodies will be stretched out in this waste land; and of all your number, all those of twenty years old and over who have been crying out against me,
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Numbers 14:26-29
Commentary on Numbers 14:20-35
(Read Numbers 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.