I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”
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
I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them,.... Deprive them of inhabiting the land; so as many as died of the pestilence were even all the spies who brought an evil report of the good land, Num 14:37; with respect to the body of the people, this is to be considered not as a peremptory decree or a determined point; but is delivered...
the Lord said, . . . I will smite them with the pestilence--not a final decree, but a threatening, suspended, as appeared from the issue, on the intercession of Moses and the repentance of Israel.