The Forty-Year Decree and Why None Lived Past Sixty

"According to the number of the days, etc." Since the decree applied only to those who came out of Egypt from twenty years old and upward, etc. (Numbers 32:11), and the decree was for forty years, therefore they were completed in death by the end of forty years, for not one of them died younger than sixty years, and not one of them was older than sixty; for as soon as each and every one reached sixty years he would die. And from where do we learn that they were completed in death by forty years? As it is said, "And it came to pass, when all the men of war were consumed in dying" (Deuteronomy 2:14), and immediately, "the LORD spoke unto me, saying: Thou art to pass over" (Deuteronomy 2:17-18). From here our Sages, of blessed memory, said: One who is sixty, behold he is liable to karet (excision), since all those six hundred thousand foot-soldiers who came out of Egypt all died by karet, and not one of them lived more than sixty years. "According to the number of the days that ye spied out." But behold, in the second year Moses sent the spies, and they should have stood in the wilderness from the sending onward forty years; yet they stood there only forty years from the going-out of Egypt onward, as it is said, "and the days which we walked from Kadesh-barnea until all the generation was consumed" (Deuteronomy 2:14). Why? Because they had already walked two years. And why is it thus reduced? This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, made the reckoning with the sons and brought into the reckoning the first years, for there was wrath against the fathers, because they made the calf in the first year; and He reduced from the years of their lives one year, for He reckoned for them that year in the count of the forty years, as it is said, "and in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them" (Exodus 32:34).