8 Harden not your heart, as at Meribah, as [in] the day of Massah, in the wilderness;
And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the contention of the children of Israel, and because they had tempted Jehovah, saying, Is Jehovah among us, or not?
Ye shall not tempt Jehovah your God, as ye tempted him in Massah.
And why will ye harden your heart, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their heart? When he had wrought mightily among them, did they not let them go, and they departed?
And the people contended with Moses, and said, Give us water, that we may drink! And Moses said to them, Why do ye dispute with me? Why do ye tempt Jehovah?
But I would put you in remembrance, you who once knew all things, that the Lord, having saved a people out of [the] land of Egypt, in the second place destroyed those who had not believed.
See that ye refuse not him that speaks. For if those did not escape who had refused him who uttered the oracles on earth, much more we who turn away from him [who does so] from heaven:
in that it is said, To-day if ye will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation; (for who was it, who, having heard, provoked? but [was it] not all who came out of Egypt by Moses? And with whom was he wroth forty years? [Was it] not with those who had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to those who had not hearkened to the word? And we see that they could not enter in on account of unbelief;)
harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness; where your fathers tempted [me], by proving [me], and saw my works forty years.
but, according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up to thyself wrath, in [the] day of wrath and revelation of [the] righteous judgment of God,
And Jehovah heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and swore, saying, None among these men, this evil generation, shall in any wise see that good land, which I swore to give unto your fathers!
How long [shall I bear] with this evil assembly, which murmur against me? I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against me.
And Jehovah said to Moses, How long will this people despise me? and how long will they not believe me, for all the signs which I have done among them?
And Pharaoh saw that there was respite; and he hardened his heart, and hearkened not to them, as Jehovah had said.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 95
Commentary on Psalms 95 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 95
For the expounding of this psalm we may borrow a great deal of light from the apostle's discourse, Heb. 3 and 4, where it appears both to have been penned by David and to have been calculated for the days of the Messiah; for it is there said expressly (Heb. 4:7) that the day here spoken of (v. 7) is to be understood of the gospel day, in which God speaks to us by his Son in a voice which we are concerned to hear, and proposes to us a rest besides that of Canaan. In singing psalms it is intended,
This psalm must be sung with a holy reverence of God's majesty and a dread of his justice, with a desire to please him and a fear to offend him.
Psa 95:1-7
The psalmist here, as often elsewhere, stirs up himself and others to praise God; for it is a duty which ought to be performed with the most lively affections, and which we have great need to be excited to, being very often backward to it and cold in it. Observe,
The latter part of this psalm, which begins in the middle of a verse, is an exhortation to those who sing gospel psalms to live gospel lives, and to hear the voice of God's word; otherwise, how can they expect that he should hear the voice of their prayers and praises? Observe,
Now this case of Israel may be applied to those of their posterity that lived in David's time, when this psalm was penned; let them hear God's voice, and not harden their hearts as their fathers did, lest, if they were stiffnecked like them, God should be provoked to forbid them the privileges of his temple at Jerusalem, of which he had said, This is my rest. But it must be applied to us Christians, because so the apostle applies it. There is a spiritual and eternal rest set before us, and promised to us, of which Canaan was a type; we are all (in profession, at least) bound for this rest; yet many that seem to be so come short and shall never enter into it. And what is it that puts a bar in their door? It is sin; it is unbelief, that sin against the remedy, against our appeal. Those that, like Israel, distrust God, and his power and goodness, and prefer the garlick and onions of Egypt before the milk and honey of Canaan, will justly be shut out from his rest: so shall their doom be; they themselves have decided it. Let us therefore fear, Heb. 4:1.