Numbers 14:31-35

14:31 But I will bring in your little ones, whom you said would become victims of war, ¹  and they will enjoy ²  the land that you have despised. 14:32 But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, 14:33 and your children will wander ³  in the wilderness forty years and suffer for your unfaithfulness, ⁴  until your dead bodies lie finished ⁵  in the wilderness. 14:34 According to the number of the days you have investigated this land, forty days – one day for a year – you will suffer for ⁶  your iniquities, forty years, and you will know what it means to thwart me. ⁷  14:35 I, the Lord, have said, “I will surely do so to all this evil congregation that has gathered together against me. In this wilderness they will be finished, and there they will die!”’”

Deuteronomy 1:20-21

1:20 Then I said to you, “You have come to the Amorite hill country which the Lord our God is about to give ⁸  us. 1:21 Look, he ⁹  has placed the land in front of you! ¹⁰  Go up, take possession of it, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, said to do. Do not be afraid or discouraged!”

Deuteronomy 1:39

1:39 Also, your infants, who you thought would die on the way, ¹¹  and your children, who as yet do not know good from bad, ¹²  will go there; I will give them the land and they will possess it.

¹ tn Or “plunder.”

² tn Heb “know.”

³ tn The word is “shepherds.” It means that the people would be wilderness nomads, grazing their flock on available land.

⁴ tn Heb “you shall bear your whoredoms.” The imagery of prostitution is used throughout the Bible to reflect spiritual unfaithfulness, leaving the covenant relationship and following after false gods. Here it is used generally for their rebellion in the wilderness, but not for following other gods.

⁵ tn The infinitive is from תָּמַם (tamam), which means “to be complete.” The word is often used to express completeness in a good sense – whole, blameless, or the like. Here and in v. 35 it seems to mean “until your deaths have been completed.” See also Gen 47:15; Deut 2:15.

⁶ tn Heb “you shall bear.”

⁷ tn The phrase refers to the consequences of open hostility to God, or perhaps abandonment of God. The noun תְּנוּאָה (tÿnu’ah) occurs in Job 33:10 (perhaps). The related verb occurs in Num 30:6 HT (30:5 ET) and 32:7 with the sense of “disallow, discourage.” The sense of the expression adopted in this translation comes from the meticulous study of R. Loewe, “Divine Frustration Exegetically Frustrated,” Words and Meanings, 137-58.

⁸ tn The Hebrew participle has an imminent future sense here, although many English versions treat it as a present tense (“is giving us,” NAB, NIV, NRSV) or a predictive future (“will give us,” NCV).

⁹ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun (“he”) has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid repetition.

¹⁰ tn Or “has given you the land” (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV).

¹¹ tn Heb “would be a prey.”

¹² sn Do not know good from bad. This is a figure of speech called a merism (suggesting a whole by referring to its extreme opposites). Other examples are the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:9), the boy who knows enough “to reject the wrong and choose the right” (Isa 7:16; 8:4), and those who “cannot tell their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11). A young child is characterized by lack of knowledge.