In keeping with the forty days you spied out the land, you shall bear your guilt forty years—a year for each day—and you will experience My alienation.
Parallel translations
- WEB After the number of the days in which you spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, you will bear your iniquities, even forty years, and you will know my alienation.’
- KJV After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.
- NKJV According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know My rejection.
- NASB In accordance with the number of days that you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall suffer the punishment for your guilt a year, that is, forty years, and you will know My opposition.
- NLT “‘Because your men explored the land for forty days, you must wander in the wilderness for forty years—a year for each day, suffering the consequences of your sins. Then you will discover what it is like to have me for an enemy.’
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
For each of the forty days of spying, Israel would wander a year, learning what it means to have God against them. The punishment deliberately matched the offense.
Overview
God set the forty years of wandering as a day-for-a-year correspondence to the forty days of reconnaissance. The fitting measure taught Israel the gravity of opposing the LORD's purposes. Experiencing God's displeasure was meant to lead the people to reverence and renewed dependence on Him.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 19
- Ezek 4:6When you have completed these days, lie down again, but on your right side, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have assigned to you 40 days, a day for each year.
- Num 13:25After forty days the men returned from spying out the land,
- Jer 18:9–10And if at another time I announce that I will build up and establish a nation or kingdom,
- Dan 9:24Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
- Ps 95:10For forty years I was angry with that generation, and I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known My ways.”
- 1 Sam 2:30Therefore, the LORD, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever. But now the LORD declares: Far be it from Me! For I will honor those who honor Me, but those who despise Me will be disdained.
- Deut 31:16–17And the LORD said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers, and these people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant I have made with them.
- Zech 11:10Next I took my staff called Favor and cut it in two, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations.
- Heb 4:1Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be deemed to have fallen short of it.
- 2 Chr 36:21So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the LORD through Jeremiah.
- Rev 11:3And I will empower my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”
- Num 18:23The Levites are to perform the work of the Tent of Meeting, and they must bear their iniquity. This is a permanent statute for the generations to come. The Levites will not receive an inheritance among the Israelites.
- Lev 20:19You must not have sexual relations with the sister of your mother or your father, for it is exposing one’s own kin; both shall bear their iniquity.
- 1 Kgs 8:56“Blessed be the LORD, who has given rest to His people Israel according to all that He promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises He made through His servant Moses.
- Lam 3:31–33For the Lord will not cast us off forever.
- Ezek 14:10They will bear their punishment—the punishment of the inquirer will be the same as that of the prophet—
- Ps 77:8Is His loving devotion gone forever? Has His promise failed for all time?
- Ps 105:42For He remembered His holy promise to Abraham His servant.
- Ps 38:4For my iniquities have overwhelmed me; they are a burden too heavy to bear.
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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 14:34 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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