(28) As ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do unto you.--The Israelites had exclaimed in their sinful murmuring against God, "Would God we had died in the wilderness" (Numbers 14:2); and God declares in His wrathful displeasure that the judgment which they had thus invoked should be inflicted upon them, and that their carcases should fall in the wilderness.
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.
Say unto them, as truly as I live, saith the Lord,.... The form of an oath, as in Numbers 14:21,
as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you; what they had wished for, and expressed in the hearing of the Lord, he threatens them should be their case.
as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you; what they had wished for, and expressed in the hearing of the Lord, he threatens them should be their case.