Commentaire sur Les Nombres 14:28

חי אני AS TRULY AS I LIVE — This is a formula of taking an oath: If I do not do so, then — if this were at all possible to say of God — I do not live.

IM LO’ (IF NOT) AS YE HAVE SPOKEN IN MINE EARS. The meaning thereof is as an expression of wonder: “Will I not do to you as ye have spoken?” Such is the way of the [Sacred] Language: [Thou art sent] not to many people of an unintelligible speech and of a slow tongue, whose words thou canst not understand. ‘Im lo’ (would they not) have hearkened unto thee if I sent thee to them?¹⁵⁷Ezekiel 3:5-6. Similarly, ‘im lo’ (if not) as I have thought did it come to pass?¹⁵⁸Isaiah 14:24.

חי אני נאם ה' אם לא וגו, whenever we find two successive negatives this is equivalent to a positive statement. [the word אם as well as the word לא are each understood as a negative. Ed.] כאשר דברתם באזני, a reference to verse 2 in which the people are reported as wishing that they had died already in Egypt and inverse 3 when they had prematurely bemoaned their wives and children as becoming part of the Canaanites booty in the war they anticipated losing. G’d also refers to what the spies themselves had said when they described the land of Canaan as “consuming its inhabitants” (13,32). G’d would see to it now that all these statements would become self-fulfilling prophecies.