If You kill this people as one man, the nations who have heard of Your fame will say,
Here is, I. The righteous sentence which God gave against Israel for their murmuring and unbelief, which, though afterwards mitigated, showed what was the desert of their sin and the demand of injured justice, and what would have been done if Moses had not interposed.
Commenting on Numbers 14:11-19
Now if thou shall kill all this people, as one man,.... Suddenly, and at once, as might be done by a pestilence; and as 185,000 were smitten at once, and as thought by the same disease, by the Angel of the Lord in the camp of the Assyrians, in later times, Kg2 19:35, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee; the Egyptians...
Now [if] thou shalt kill [all] this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, (g) So that none shall escape.