But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. — All the congregation here, as elsewhere, seems to denote the princes or chief men of the congregation; otherwise it is difficult to understand to whom the order was addressed to stone Joshua and Caleb. Stoning appears to have been a mode of death commonly adopted in Egypt (Exodus 8:26). Under the Jewish law stoning was the ordinary, and, as some think, the only prescribed mode of death, and was inflicted as the punishment for crimes such as adultery (Deuteronomy 22:22; Deuteronomy 22:24), idolatry (Deuteronomy 13:10), witchcraft (Leviticus 20:27), sabbath-breaking (Numbers 15:35), and blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16). Moses had apprehended the same outbreak of popular violence on a former occasion (Exodus 17:4), and, at a later period, David was threatened in a similar manner (1 Samuel 30:6).
And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation. — The meaning probably is in the court of the Tabernacle, or, as some think, above the Tabernacle. (See the Targum of Jonathan and the Vulgate and Septuagint Versions.) The children of Israel could not have seen the glory of the Lord had it been manifested within the Tabernacle.