Numbers 14:36, commentary and pictures

The men are those Moses sent to search the land, who returned with an evil, slanderous report upon the land and made the whole congregation murmur, complain, and rebel against Moses and the Lord, turning them against him. They were the ten unfaithful spies, distinct from Joshua and Caleb. Joshua and Caleb lived on, and their survival before the Lord and the people confirmed that their faithful report was true. The men who brought the evil report died by a plague before the Lord. As held by others, the men who brought the evil report were consumed by fire from the Lord.

They were destroyed by God and perished by divine judgment before the people and before the eyes of Israel after Moses announced God's decision to turn them back into the wilderness, which proved the punishment was merited and that God was in earnest. Their report brought God's displeasure and helped bring about Israel's rebellion, with the sentence that Israel would wander in the wilderness for forty years. Their doom signified the coming destruction in the wilderness of all in their ranks above twenty years of age, whose unbelief and rebellion cost them the promised land and caused the long delay and loss of entry into Canaan. When the people later tried to enter the land, the favorable time had passed and their enemies were prepared, and despite Moses' warning that the Lord was not with them their presumptuous advance ended in defeat. The Israelites later wrongly blamed God and Moses for that delay, claiming they could have taken the land earlier.

Their spirit of spreading a damaging report is the same spirit behind an unwise course that hindered God's work for years, where the harm came from that course itself rather than from financial embarrassment. That history applies to God's people today, when the same cowardly complaining and drawing back from action when risks must be encountered is re-enacted, with the same unwillingness to heed faithful reports and true counsel as in the days of Caleb and Joshua. The self-denying servants of God who bear the burden of his cause and suffer privation to help his people are seldom better appreciated now than then, for ancient Israel was repeatedly tested and found wanting with few receiving the faithful warnings God gave. Darkness and unbelief increase as the time of the second advent of Christ nears, truth becomes less palatable to the carnally minded whose hearts are slow to believe and tardy to repent, and long has the Lord borne with his people, forgiving their wanderings and waiting for room in their hearts while false ideas, jealousy, and distrust crowd him out. Few enlightened professed Israel dare to come boldly forward as Caleb did and stand firmly for God and the right, those the Lord has chosen to conduct his work become the target for hatred and malicious falsehood because they will not turn from integrity to gratify the selfish and unconsecrated, Satan is wide awake and working warily in these last days, and God calls for men of spiritual nerve and stamina to resist his artifices.