So tell them: As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you exactly as I heard you say.
Parallel translations
- WEB Tell them, ‘As I live, says Yahweh, surely as you have spoken in my ears, so will I do to you.
- KJV Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:
- NKJV Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you:
- NASB Say to them, ‘As I live,’ declares the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you;
- NLT Now tell them this: ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you the very things I heard you say.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God swore to do to the people exactly what they had spoken in His hearing. Their faithless words became their own sentence.
Overview
The LORD took an oath to grant the very thing the people had wished: death in the wilderness. Their careless, faithless speech was turned into judgment upon them. This sobering reversal warns that words spoken in unbelief are not without weight before God.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Num 14:21“Yet as surely as I live and as surely as the whole earth is filled with the glory of the LORD,
- Heb 3:17And with whom was God angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
- Num 14:23not one will ever see the land that I swore to give their fathers. None of those who have treated Me with contempt will see it.
- Num 26:64–65Among all these, however, there was not one who had been numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest when they counted the Israelites in the Wilderness of Sinai.
- Num 14:2All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this wilderness!
- Ps 90:8–9You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
- Num 32:11‘Because they did not follow Me wholeheartedly, not one of the men twenty years of age or older who came out of Egypt will see the land that I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—
- Deut 1:35“Not one of the men of this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your fathers,
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
In the wilderness Christ is the water from the rock, the bronze serpent lifted up that the dying might look and live (John 3:14), and the star and scepter that Balaam saw rising out of Jacob.
How Numbers 14:28 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.