And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years,.... Or "feed" , as shepherds, who go from place to place, and seek fresh pasture for their sheep; it being the custom of a shepherd, as Aben Ezra observes, not to stand or rest in a place; and so like sheep grazing in a wilderness, where they have short commons, and wander about in search, of better.
These forty years are to be reckoned from their coming out of Egypt, from whence they had now been come about a year and a half:and bear your whoredoms; the punishment of their idolatries, which are frequently signified by this phrase, and particularly of the idolatry of the calf, which God threatened to punish whenever he visited for sin, Ex 32:34; and of other sins, as their murmurings, &c.
for it was on account of them their children wandered so long in the wilderness, and were kept out of the possession of the land of Canaan:until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness; everyone of them be consumed by death, save those before excepted, Nu 14:30.