And ye returned and wept before the Lord. He here appeals to the testimony of their own conscience; for they never would have been brought to weeping and prayers, except by the force of their own feelings. Since, then, they were abundantly convinced, that a just punishment was inflicted upon their obstinacy, necessity drove them to seek after God: consequently they had no cause to complain, though God manifested Himself to be implacable. In the last verse there is an ambiguity in the meaning of these words, "many days, according to the number of the days." Some, rendering the verb in the pluperfect tense, "in which we had remained there," [1] suppose that they still abode there another forty days. But it is equally probable; that an indefinite time is referred to: as if he had said, that the people delayed there a long time, from whence it might be inferred, that they lay like persons stupified, from lack of knowing what to do. It is Kadesh-barnea to which Moses refers, from whence the spies had been sent forth; and not the Kadesh where Miriam died, and where the people murmured for want of water.

Footnotes

1 - "Quibus antea manseratis." -- Pagninus in Poole. The V. has only "Sedistis ergo in Cades-barne multo tempore." On this Corn. a Lapide has the following note: "In Hebrew it is added, according to the days that ye abode, which Vatablus thus explains, Ye remained in Kadesh-barnea as many days after the return of the spies, as ye had remained there before their return. Again, the Hebrews themselves, in Sealer Olam, thus explain it, Ye remained in Kadesh-barnea as many days as ye afterwards remained in all your other stations together, viz., 19 years: for twice 19 make 38, to which if you add the two years that had elapsed before they came to Kadesh-barnea, you will have the forty years of their journeyings in the desert. Nothing like this, however, can be gathered from our version, nor from the Hebrew either; for the expression, according to the days that ye abode,' is merely a Hebrew form of repetition, explanatory of what had preceded, and meaning for a long time.' -- Hence our interpreter has omitted this Hebrew repetition as redundant, and strange to Latin ears."

And ye returned and wept before the LORD; but the LORD would not (z) hearken to your voice, nor give ear unto you.
(z) Because you rather showed your hypocrisy, than true repentance; rather lamenting the loss of your brethren, than repenting for your sins.

And ye returned and wept before the Lord,.... Those that remained when the Amorites left pursuing them, returned to the camp at Kadesh, where Moses and the Levites were, and the rest of the people; and here they wept at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and hence said to be "before the Lord"; they wept because of the slaughter that had been made among them, and because of their sin in going contrary to the will of God, and because they were ordered into the wilderness; and very probably they cried and prayed unto the Lord, that they might not be turned back, but that he would go with them, and bring them now into the promised land:
but the Lord would not hearken to your voice, nor give ear unto you; was inexorable, and would not repeal the order to go into the wilderness again, where he had sworn in his wrath their carcasses should fall; the sentence was irrevocable.