You will all drop dead in this wilderness! Because you complained against me, every one of you who is twenty years old or older and was included in the registration will die.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness; and all who were counted of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me,
- KJV Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me,
- BSB Your bodies will fall in this wilderness—all who were numbered in the census, everyone twenty years of age or older—because you have grumbled against Me.
- NKJV The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered, according to your entire number, from twenty years old and above.
- NASB your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, all your numbered men according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me.
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 decreed that the bodies of all the murmurers aged twenty and up would fall in the wilderness. The rebellious adult generation would not enter the land.
Overview
The LORD sentenced the registered fighting men, those most responsible, to die in the wilderness over the coming years. The judgment fit the crime: those who refused to enter would never enter. God's justice is precise, addressing the accountable while sparing the innocent young.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 6
- Num 1:45So all those who were counted of the children of Israel by their fathers’ houses, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go out to war in Israel;
- Num 26:64But among these there was not a man of them who were counted by Moses and Aaron the priest, who counted the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai.
- Heb 3:17With whom was he displeased forty years? Wasn’t it with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
- 1 Cor 10:5However with most of them, God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
- Num 14:32–33But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness.
- Jude 1:5Now I desire to remind you, though you already know this, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who didn’t believe.
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 14:29 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
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