Charles Ellicott Commentary Numbers 14:33

"And your children shall be wanderers in the wilderness forty years, and shall bear your whoredoms, until your dead bodies be consumed in the wilderness." — Numbers 14:33 (ASV)

And your children shall wander.— Better, shall be shepherds, or, shall feed their flocks.

Forty years.— The forty years were counted from the exodus, not from the return of the spies to Kadesh. (See Numbers 14:34 and Note.)

And bear your whoredoms.— The children were doomed to bear the penalty of their fathers’ apostasy. (Compare Exodus 34:16.)