After the number of days in which ye searched the land,
[even] forty days,.... For so long they were searching it,
each day for a year; reckoning each day for a year, forty days for forty years, as in Ezekiel 4:6;
shall ye bear your iniquities, [even] forty years: which number is given, being a round one, otherwise it was but thirty eight years and a half ere they were all cut off, and their children entered the land:
and ye shall know my breach of promise; God never makes any breach of promise; his covenant he will not break, nor alter what is gone out of his lips; men break their promises, and transgress the covenant they have made with him, but he never breaks his, Psalms 89:34; this should rather be rendered only, "ye shall know my breach"; experience a breach made upon them by him, upon their persons and families by consuming them in the wilderness: the Targum of Jonathan is,
"and ye shall know what ye have murmured against me;''
this same word is used in the plural in Job 33:10, and is by the Targum rendered "murmurings" or "complaints"; and so the sense is, ye shall know by sad experience the evil of complaining and murmuring against me. The Vulgate Latin version is,
"ye shall know my vengeance;''
and so the Septuagint,
"ye shall know the fury of my anger''
which give the sense, though not a literal version of the words.