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.

Jehovah swore that it should happen to the murmurers as they had spoken. Their corpses should fall in the desert, even all who had been numbered, from twenty years old and upwards: they should not see the land into which Jehovah had lifted up His hand (see at Exodus 6:8) to lead them, with the sole exception of Caleb and Joshua. But their children, who, as they said, would be a prey (Numbers 14:3), them Jehovah would bring, and they should learn to know the land which the others had despised.

Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:

14:28 As ye have spoken - When you wickedly wished you might die 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.