Numbers 14 · a question people ask
If the LORD pardoned them, why did they still die in the wilderness?
The chapter says both, one after the other. "I have pardoned according to your word" (14:20), "but in very deed" those who had seen his glory and signs "shall not see the land" (14:21-23). The LORD had said, "I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them" (14:12). After the pardon, that is not what he says he will do: that generation will die in this wilderness over forty years (14:29, 14:33-34), and their little ones will come into the land (14:31). What he also said of himself, and Moses prayed back to him, was that "he will by no means clear the guilty" (14:18). The chapter doesn't explain further how the two fit. Numbers later records that the word was kept: "There was not a man left of them, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun" (26:65).
The verses
“I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.””
“‘The LORD is slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience; and he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation.’”
“The LORD said, “I have pardoned according to your word; but in very deed—as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the LORD’s glory— because all those men who have seen my glory and my signs, which I worked in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not listened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I swore to their fathers, neither shall any of those who despised me see it.”
“Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness; and all who were counted of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, who have complained against me,”