Comentario sobre Números 14:34

את תנואתי [AND YE SHALL KNOW] את תנואתי — You shall know (realise) that you have removed your heart from following after Me. תנואה is an expression for “removing”, similar to (Numbers 30:6) “for her father hath removed her (הניא) from her vow” (cf. Rashi on that verse, where he quotes this phrase).

במספר הימים, we have a rule in halachah that שלוחו של אדם כמותו that when one appoints someone to act on one’s behalf the appointee is regarded as an extension of the one who appointed him. The spies had therefore not acted on their own, but as the people’s agents. Hence Moses, i.e. G’d, addresses the people as the instigators of this disaster. Their initial sin had consisted in wanting to find out if the land could be conquered.

יום לשנה יום לשנה ”a day for a year, a day for a year.” We would have expected the Torah to write the opposite, i.e. “a year for a day,” i.e. that the punishment for each day the spies had spent traveling the land and planning to slander it would be that the people would have to spend an additional year in the desert. Theirs would be nomads’ tents which flutter in the wind, an existence daily reminding them of their insecurity on earth. Not only that, but according to the context of the story mention of the punishment should have preceded mention of the sin. If the Torah wrote the verse in the manner it did it was to teach us something about G’d’s mercy which is manifest even while He metes out punishment.
When the Torah chose the wording: “a day for a year,” we must consider the fact that seeing the land of Israel has been described as an area of 400 by 400 miles, approx, this is an area which the spies could not possibly have covered in the space of a mere forty days. However, seeing G’d had known in advance that He would have to decree the punishment mentioned, He telescoped the distance under their feet so that they could cover it in such a short period of time. This is why G’d said: “a day for every year,” i.e. just like a father who is forced to inflict a blow on his son. He does not inflict a cruel blow but is as considerate as possible. The meaning of the verse therefore is: “here I have reduced the extent of your punishment as much as is possible by shortening the time you (the spies) needed to traverse the land so that it took only forty days. “