Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on 1 Corinthians 10:5

5. But--though they had so many tokens of God's presence.

many of them--rather, "the majority of them"; "the whole part." All except Joshua and Caleb of the first generation.

not--in the Greek emphatically standing in the beginning of the sentence: "Not," as one might have naturally expected, "with the more part of them was," &c.

God--whose judgment alone is valid.

for--the event showed, they had not pleased God.

overthrown--literally, "strewn in heaps."

in the wilderness--far from the land of promise.