Bible Commentaries
Numbers 14

Verses 1-45

Discouragement of the People and Sentence of Forty Years’ Wandering

9. Bread for us] cp. Numbers 13:32; Numbers 22:4; Numbers 24:8.

12. Cp. Exodus 32:10, where a similar promise is made and where Moses shows the same self-effacing spirit. 13. Cp. Joshua 7:9; 2 Samuel 1:2; Psalms 79:10.

17. Let the power of my Lord be great] i.e. in the eyes of the heathen, when they see Israel possessing the land.

18. See on Exodus 34:6, Exodus 34:7.

22. These ten times] a round number indieating full measure: cp. Genesis 31:7.

33. Shall wander] RV ’shall be wanderers.’ Better, ’shall be shepherds,’ lead an unsettled life instead of occupying the land. The forty years are reckoned from the time of the departure from Egypt. See Deuteronomy 2:14. Bear your whoredoms] suffer the penalty of your faithlessness.

34. My breach of promise] RV ’my alienation’ from you; RM ’the revoking of my promise.’

40. The mountain] the Hillcountry by way of which the spies had gone. The people presume to disobey the command of Deuteronomy 2:25.

45. Unto Hormah] This was about 25 m. NE. of Kadesh. They must therefore have marched considerably to the N. of Kadesh: see on Deuteronomy 21:3.