Numbers 14:28-29

14:28 Say to them, ‘As I live, ¹  says ²  the Lord, I will surely do to you just what you have spoken in my hearing. ³  14:29 Your dead bodies ⁴  will fall in this wilderness – all those of you who were numbered, according to your full number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me.

Numbers 14:41

14:41 But Moses said, “Why ⁵  are you now transgressing the commandment ⁶  of the Lord? It will not succeed!

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¹ sn Here again is the oath that God swore in his wrath, an oath he swore by himself, that they would not enter the land. “As the Lord lives,” or “by the life of the Lord,” are ways to render it.

² tn The word נְאֻם (nÿ’um) is an “oracle.” It is followed by the subjective genitive: “the oracle of the Lord” is equal to saying “the Lord says.”

³ tn Heb “in my ears.”

sn They had expressed the longing to have died in the wilderness, and not in war. God will now give them that. They would not say to God “your will be done,” so he says to them, “your will be done” (to borrow from C. S. Lewis).

⁴ tn Or “your corpses” (also in vv. 32, 33).

⁵ tn The line literally has, “Why is this [that] you are transgressing….” The demonstrative pronoun is enclitic; it brings the force of “why in the world are you doing this now?”

⁶ tn Heb “mouth.”