28 So tell them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very thing I heard you say:
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:
28 Say to them, 'As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you:
28 Tell them, As I live - God's decree - here's what I'm going to do:
28 Say to them, 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you:
28 Now tell them this: 'As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very things I heard you say.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Numbers 14:28
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.