Bible Strands
Numbers 14:33
Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness until the last of your bodies lies in the wilderness.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks to the Israelite congregation through Moses immediately after their refusal to enter the Promised Land. The declaration functions as a direct judicial response to the people's collective rebellion.
The words — רֹעִים (ro'im, "shepherds") and נָשְׂאוּ (nas'u, "they will bear") carry the core meaning. "Shepherds" describes a state of unrooted wandering and animal tending, while "bear" denotes enduring the weight of the prior generation's unfaithfulness.
The thread — This forty-year span is reiterated in Numbers 32:13 as the period until the rebellious generation perishes, and Deuteronomy 2:14 records thirty-eight years of travel from Kadesh-barnea to the Brook of Zered. The duration directly mirrors the forty days of land spying outlined in Numbers 14:34.
Why it lands — The passage requires readers to acknowledge that corporate disobedience triggers prolonged, intergenerational consequences. It demands acceptance that divine judgment follows a fixed timeline strictly proportional to the initial transgression.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.
Cross-references
- Numbers 32:13 The anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the whole generation who had done evil in His sight was gone.
- Ezekiel 23:35 Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Because you have forgotten Me and have cast Me behind your back, you must bear the consequences of your indecency and prostitution.’”
- Deuteronomy 2:14 The time we spent traveling from Kadesh-barnea until we crossed over the Brook of Zered was thirty-eight years, until that entire generation of fighting men had perished from the camp, as the LORD had sworn to them.
- Psalms 107:40 He pours out contempt on the nobles and makes them wander in a trackless wasteland.
- Numbers 5:31 The husband will be free from guilt, but the woman shall bear her iniquity.”
- Numbers 33:38 At the LORD’s command, Aaron the priest climbed Mount Hor and died there on the first day of the fifth month, in the fortieth year after the Israelites had come out of the land of Egypt.
- Deuteronomy 1:3 In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the LORD had commanded him concerning them.
- Joshua 14:10 Now behold, as the LORD promised, He has kept me alive these forty-five years since He spoke this word to Moses, while Israel wandered in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old,
- Psalms 107:4 Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no path to a city in which to dwell.
- Jeremiah 3:1 “If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her? Would not such a land be completely defiled? But you have played the harlot with many lovers—and you would return to Me?” declares the LORD.