28 say unto them, I live—an affirmation of Jehovah—if, as ye have spoken in Mine ears—so I do not to you; 29 in this wilderness do your carcases fall, even all your numbered ones, to all your number, from a son of twenty years and upward, who have murmured against Me; 30 ye—ye come not in unto the land which I have lifted up My hand to cause you to tabernacle in it, except Caleb son of Jephunneh, and Joshua son of Nun. 31 'As to your infants—of whom ye have said, A spoil they are become—I have even brought them in, and they have known the land which ye have kicked against; 32 as to you—your carcases do fall in this wilderness, 33 and your sons are evil in the wilderness forty years, and have borne your whoredoms till your carcases are consumed in the wilderness; 34 by the number of the days 'in' which ye spied the land, forty days,—a day for a year, a day for a year—ye do bear your iniquities, forty years, and ye have known my breaking off; 35 I 'am' Jehovah, I have spoken; if I do not this to all this evil company who are meeting against me;—in this wilderness they are consumed, and there they die.'
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Numbers 14:28-35
Commentary on Numbers 14:20-35
(Read Numbers 14:20-35)
The Lord granted the prayer of Moses so far as not at once to destroy the congregation. But disbelief of the promise forbids the benefit. Those who despise the pleasant land shall be shut out of it. The promise of God should be fulfilled to their children. They wished to die in the wilderness; God made their sin their ruin, took them at their word, and their carcases fell in the wilderness. They were made to groan under the burden of their own sin, which was too heavy for them to bear. Ye shall know my breach of promise, both the causes of it, that it is procured by your sin, for God never leaves any till they first leave him; and the consequences of it, that will produce your ruin. But your little ones, now under twenty years old, which ye, in your unbelief, said should be a prey, them will I bring in. God will let them know that he can put a difference between the guilty and the innocent, and cut them off without touching their children. Thus God would not utterly take away his loving kindness.