(15) I would not bring them into the land.--Numbers 14:28-29. In consequence of their rebellion and want of faith, all the men above twenty years old when they came out of Egypt were doomed by the Divine oath to perish in the wilderness. Yet He did not utterly take His mercy from them, but promised that their children should be brought into the land, as is set forth in Ezekiel 20:17.20:10-26. The history of Israel in the wilderness is referred to in the new Testament as well as in the Old, for warning. God did great things for them. He gave them the law, and revived the ancient keeping of the sabbath day. Sabbaths are privileges; they are signs of our being his people. If we do the duty of the day, we shall find, to our comfort, it is the Lord that makes us holy, that is, truly happy, here; and prepares us to be happy, that is, perfectly holy, hereafter. The Israelites rebelled, and were left to the judgments they brought upon themselves. God sometimes makes sin to be its own punishment, yet he is not the Author of sin: there needs no more to make men miserable, than to give them up to their own evil desires and passions.Yet also I lifted up mine hand unto them in the wilderness,.... Swore unto them, as in Ezekiel 20:5; that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them; by promise to their fathers, and to them. This is to be understood of the generation that came out of Egypt, that received the ill report the spies made, and murmured against the Lord; wherefore he swore in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest; or he would not bring them into the land of Canaan, save Caleb and Joshua; and accordingly none else entered but them, though their posterity did; and so both his oath to them, that they should not enter, and his oath to Abraham, that he would give to his seed the land, had their accomplishment, Numbers 14:23; a land flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands; See Gill on Ezekiel 20:6. |