'Forty Years' in the Bible

and your sons, shall be shepherds in the desert forty years, and shall bear your unchastities, - until your dead bodies are consumed in the desert.

By the number of the days wherein ye spied out the land - forty days, each day for a year, shall they bear your iniquities - forty years, - so shall ye know my opposition.

So the anger of Yahweh kindled upon Israel, and he made them wander in the desert, forty years, - until all the generation who had done the evil in the eyes of Yahweh, had wasted away!