Numbers 14:34

³² As for you, however, your bodies will fall in this wilderness.

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.

In keeping with the forty days you spied out the land, you shall bear your guilt forty years—a year for each day—and you will experience My alienation.

³⁵ I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this entire wicked congregation, which has conspired against Me. They will meet their end in the wilderness, and there they will die.”

³⁶ So the men Moses had sent to spy out the land, who had returned and made the whole congregation grumble against him by bringing out a bad report about the land—

Here the Bible tells a story about someone else. Ask yourself what it can say to us today. Do read the surrounding verses too, because the context often says more than a single verse.

Compare

BSB: In keeping with the forty days you spied out the land, you shall bear your guilt forty years—a year for each day—and you will experience My alienation.
KJV: After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.
WEB: After the number of the days in which you spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, you will bear your iniquities, even forty years, and you will know my alienation.’
ASV: After the number of the days in which ye spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my alienation.
DARBY: After the number of the days in which ye have searched out the land, forty days, each day for a year shall ye bear your iniquities forty years, and ye shall know mine estrangement [from you].
BLB: By the number of the days in which you⁺ spied out the land, forty days—a day for the year, a day for the year—you⁺ shall bear your⁺ guilt forty years, and you⁺ shall know My rejection.

ÅB: Slik som dere utspeidet landet i førti dager, slik skal dere lide for deres misgjerninger i førti år, et år for hver dag; og dere skal kjenne at jeg har vendt meg bort fra dere.
OTB: I førti år—ett år for hver av de førti dagene dere utforsket landet—skal dere bære konsekvensene av deres synder og vite hvordan det er å ha Meg mot dere.’
B1930: Likesom I utspeidet landet i firti dager, således skal I lide for eders misgjerninger i firti år, et år for hver dag; og I skal kjenne at jeg har vendt mig bort fra eder.

Study notes (Tyndale)

Original text and word study

Cross references

Ezekiel 4:6
When you have completed these days, lie down again, but on your right side, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have assigned to you 40 days, a day for each year.
Read in context
Numbers 13:25
After forty days the men returned from spying out the land,
Read in context
Jeremiah 18:9–10
And if at another time I announce that I will build up and establish a nation or kingdom,
Read in context
Daniel 9:24
Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
Read in context
2 Chronicles 36:21
So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the LORD through Jeremiah.
Read in context
Psalms 95:10
For forty years I was angry with that generation, and I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known My ways.”
Read in context
Hebrews 4:1
Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be deemed to have fallen short of it.
Read in context
Zechariah 11:10
Next I took my staff called Favor and cut it in two, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations.
Read in context