After the number of the days - The spies were forty days in searching the land, and the people who rebelled on their evil report are condemned to wander forty years in the wilderness! Now let them make them a captain and go back to Egypt if they can. God had so hedged them about with his power and providence that they could neither go back to Egypt nor get forward to the promised land! God has provided innumerable spiritual blessings for mankind, but in the pursuit of earthly good they lose them, and often lose the others also! If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the fruit of the land, but not otherwise; unless for your farther punishment God give you your portion in this life, and ye get none in the life to come. From so great a curse may God save thee, thou money-loving, honor-hunting, pleasure-taking, thoughtless, godless man!

And ye shall know my breach of promise - This is certainly a most harsh expression; and most learned men agree that the words את תנואתי eth tenuathi should be translated my vengeance, which is the rendering of the Septuagint, Vulgate, Coptic, and Anglo-Saxon, and which is followed by almost all our ancient English translations. The meaning however appears to be this: As God had promised to bring them into the good land, provided they kept his statutes, ordinances, etc., and they had now broken their engagements, he was no longer held by his covenant; and therefore, by excluding them from the promised land, he showed them at once his annulling of the covenant which they had broken, and his vengeance because they had broken it.

after

Numbers 13:25 And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.

2 Chronicles 36:21 To fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths...

the number

Psalm 95:10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart...

Ezekiel 4:6 And when you have accomplished them, lie again on your right side, and you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days...

Daniel 9:24 Seventy weeks are determined on your people and on your holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins...

Revelation 11:3 And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth.

shall ye bear

Numbers 18:23 But the Levites shall do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they shall bear their iniquity...

Leviticus 20:19 And you shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, nor of your father's sister: for he uncovers his near kin...

Psalm 38:4 For my iniquities are gone over my head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.

Ezekiel 14:10 And they shall bear the punishment of their iniquity...

ye shall

1 Kings 8:56 Blessed be the LORD, that has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised...

Psalm 77:8 Is his mercy clean gone for ever? does his promise fail for ever more?

Psalm 105:42 For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant.

Jeremiah 18:9,10 And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it...

Lamentations 3:31-33 For the LORD will not cast off for ever...

Hebrews 4:1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.

breach of promise, or, altering of my purpose. Tenooathi, rather my failure, or disannulling, from noo, to fail, disannul; for as they had broken their engagements, God was no longer held by his covenant.

Deuteronomy 31:16,17 And the LORD said to Moses, Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers; and this people will rise up...

1 Samuel 2:30 Why the LORD God of Israel said, I said indeed that your house, and the house of your father, should walk before me for ever...

Zechariah 11:10 And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.

Order and Argument in Prayer
It is further observable that though a good man hastens to God in his trouble, and runs with all the more speed because of the unkindness of his fellow men, yet sometimes the gracious soul is left without the comfortable presence of God. This is the worst of all griefs; the text is one of Job's deep groans, far deeper than any which came from him on account of the loss of his children and his property: "Oh that I knew where I might find HIM!" The worst of all losses is to lose the smile of my God. …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 12: 1866

"Behold Your God!"
In Isaiah's day the spiritual understanding of mankind was dark through misapprehension of God. Long had Satan sought to lead men to look upon their Creator as the author of sin and suffering and death. Those whom he had thus deceived, imagined that God was hard and exacting. They regarded Him as watching to denounce and condemn, unwilling to receive the sinner so long as there was a legal excuse for not helping him. The law of love by which heaven is ruled had been misrepresented by the archdeceiver …
Ellen Gould White—The Story of Prophets and Kings

Ninth Sunday after Trinity Carnal Security and Its vices.
Text: 1 Corinthians 10, 6-13. 6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. 7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. 8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. 9 Neither let us make trial of the Lord, as some of them made trial, and perished by the serpents. 10 Neither murmur ye, as …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. III