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.
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.’
- BSB 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.
- 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 4:6And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
- Num 13:25And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.
- Jer 18:9–10And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it;
- Dan 9:24Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
- Ps 95:10Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:
- 1 Sam 2:30Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.
- Deut 31:16–17And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.
- Zech 11:10And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.
- Heb 4:1Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
- 2 Chr 36:21To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years.
- Rev 11:3And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
- Num 18:23But the Levites shall do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they shall bear their iniquity: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations, that among the children of Israel they have no inheritance.
- Lev 20:19And thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister, nor of thy father’s sister: for he uncovereth his near kin: they shall bear their iniquity.
- 1 Kgs 8:56Blessed be the LORD, that hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant.
- Lam 3:31–33For the LORD will not cast off for ever:
- Ezek 14:10And they shall bear the punishment of their iniquity: the punishment of the prophet shall be even as the punishment of him that seeketh unto him;
- Ps 77:8Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore?
- Ps 105:42For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant.
- Ps 38:4For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.
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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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