🔢WEB · Numbers 14:37
What does Numbers 14:37 mean?
"even those men who brought up an evil report of the land, died by the plague before Yahweh."
— Numbers 14:37 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
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.’
I, Yahweh, have spoken. I will surely do this to all this evil congregation, who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.”
The men, whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up an evil report against the land,
even those men who brought up an evil report of the land, died by the plague before Yahweh.
But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, remained alive of those men who went to spy out the land.
Moses told these words to all the children of Israel, and the people mourned greatly.
They rose up early in the morning, and went up to the top of the mountain, saying, “Behold, we are here, and will go up to the place which Yahweh has promised: for we have sinned.”
Explanation
This verse reports the fate of the ten spies who discouraged Israel from entering the Promised Land: they died by a plague sent directly from God. In plain language, it is a simple statement of divine judgment—these men spoke falsely and fearfully about the land God had promised, and as a direct consequence of that sin, they were struck down before they could go any further.
The context is found in Numbers 13–14. Moses, at God's command, sent twelve men—one from each tribe—to scout the land of Canaan before Israel's entry. Ten of them returned with a report emphasizing the land's dangers: giants, fortified cities, and enemies too strong to overcome. Only Caleb and Joshua urged the people to trust God's promise and go forward. The ten spies' report incited fear and outright rebellion; the people wept, accused Moses and Aaron of leading them to disaster, and even talked of stoning Joshua and Caleb and returning to Egypt. God responded with severe judgment: that generation would wander in the wilderness for forty years and die there without entering Canaan, while Caleb and Joshua alone among the adults would live to inherit the land. Numbers 14:37 specifically singles out the ten spies who spread the "evil report"—
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