Numbers 14:34

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 ¹  your iniquities, forty years, and you will know what it means to thwart me. ² 

Deuteronomy 2:7

2:7 All along the way I, the Lord your God, ³  have blessed your every effort. ⁴  I have ⁵  been attentive to ⁶  your travels through this great wasteland. These forty years I have ⁷  been with you; you have lacked for nothing.’”

Deuteronomy 8:2-4

8:2 Remember the whole way by which he ⁸  has brought you these forty years through the desert ⁹  so that he might, by humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not. 8:3 So he humbled you by making you hungry and then feeding you with unfamiliar manna. ¹⁰  He did this to teach you ¹¹  that humankind ¹²  cannot live by bread ¹³  alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord’s mouth. ¹⁴  8:4 Your clothing did not wear out nor did your feet swell all these forty years.

Nehemiah 9:21

9:21 For forty years you sustained them. Even in the desert they never lacked anything. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

Psalms 95:10

95:10 For forty years I was continually disgusted ¹⁵  with that generation,

and I said, ‘These people desire to go astray; ¹⁶ 

they do not obey my commands.’ ¹⁷ 

Acts 7:42

7:42 But God turned away from them and gave them over ¹⁸  to worship the host ¹⁹  of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices ²⁰  forty years in the wilderness, was it, ²¹  house of Israel?

Acts 13:18

13:18 For ²²  a period of about forty years he put up with ²³  them in the wilderness. ²⁴ 

[14:34]  ¹ tn Heb “you shall bear.”

[14:34]  ² 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.

[2:7]  ³ tn The Hebrew text does not have the first person pronoun; it has been supplied for purposes of English style (the Lord is speaking here).

[2:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “all the work of your hands.”

[2:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “he has.” This has been converted to first person in the translation in keeping with English style.

[2:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “known” (so ASV, NASB); NAB “been concerned about.”

[2:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “the Lord your God has.” This has been replaced in the translation by the first person pronoun (“I”) in keeping with English style.

[8:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[8:2]  ⁹ tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NRSV, NLT); likewise in v. 15.

[8:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “manna which you and your ancestors did not know.” By popular etymology the word “manna” comes from the Hebrew phrase מָן הוּא (man hu’), i.e., “What is it?” (Exod 16:15). The question remains unanswered to this very day. Elsewhere the material is said to be “white like coriander seed” with “a taste like honey cakes” (Exod 16:31; cf. Num 11:7). Modern attempts to associate it with various desert plants are unsuccessful for the text says it was a new thing and, furthermore, one that appeared and disappeared miraculously (Exod 16:21-27).

[8:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in order to make known to you.” In the Hebrew text this statement is subordinated to what precedes, resulting in a very long sentence in English. The translation makes this statement a separate sentence for stylistic reasons.

[8:3]  ¹² tn Heb “the man,” but in a generic sense, referring to the whole human race (“mankind” or “humankind”).

[8:3]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew term may refer to “food” in a more general sense (cf. CEV).

[8:3]  ¹⁴ sn Jesus quoted this text to the devil in the midst of his forty-day fast to make the point that spiritual nourishment is incomparably more important than mere physical bread (Matt 4:4; cf. Luke 4:4).

[95:10]  ¹⁵ tn The prefixed verbal form is either a preterite or an imperfect. If the latter, it emphasizes the ongoing nature of the condition in the past. The translation reflects this interpretation of the verbal form.

[95:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “a people, wanderers of heart [are] they.”

[95:10]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and they do not know my ways.” In this context the Lord’s “ways” are his commands, viewed as a pathway from which his people, likened to wayward sheep (see v. 7), wander.

[7:42]  ¹⁸ sn The expression and gave them over suggests similarities to the judgment on the nations described by Paul in Rom 1:18-32.

[7:42]  ¹⁹ tn Or “stars.”

[7:42]  ²⁰ tn The two terms for sacrifices “semantically reinforce one another and are here combined essentially for emphasis” (L&N 53.20).

[7:42]  ²¹ tn The Greek construction anticipates a negative reply which is indicated in the translation by the ‘tag’ question, “was it?”

[13:18]  ²² tn Grk “And for.” Because of the difference between Greek style, which often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” and English style, which generally does not, καί (kai) has not been translated here.

[13:18]  ²³ tn For this verb, see BDAG 1017 s.v. τροποφορέω (cf. also Deut 1:31; Exod 16:35; Num 14:34).

[13:18]  ²⁴ tn Or “desert.”