8 Let not your hearts be hard, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the waste land;
And he gave that place the name Massah and Meribah, because the children of Israel were angry, and because they put the Lord to the test, saying, Is the Lord with us or not?
Do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did in Massah.
Why do you make your hearts hard, like the hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians? When he had made sport of them, did they not let the people go, and they went away?
So the people were angry with Moses, and said, Give us water for drinking. And Moses said, Why are you angry with me? and why do you put God to the test?
Now it is my purpose to put you in mind, though you once had knowledge of all these things, of how the Lord, having taken a people safely out of Egypt, later sent destruction on those who had no faith;
See that you give ear to his voice which comes to you. For if those whose ears were shut to the voice which came to them on earth did not go free from punishment, what chance have we of going free if we give no attention to him whose voice comes from heaven?
As it is said, Today if you will let his voice come to your ears, be not hard of heart, as when you made him angry. Who made him angry when his voice came to them? was it not all those who came out of Egypt with Moses? And with whom was he angry for forty years? was it not with those who did evil, who came to their deaths in the waste land? And to whom did he make an oath that they might not come into his rest? was it not to those who went against his orders? So we see that they were not able to go in because they had no belief.
Be not hard of heart, as when you made me angry, on the day of testing in the waste land, When your fathers put me to the test, and saw my works for forty years.
But by your hard and unchanged heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of the revelation of God's judging in righteousness;
And the Lord, hearing your words, was angry, and said with an oath, Truly, not one of this evil generation will see that good land which I said I would give to your fathers,
How long am I to put up with this evil people and their outcries against me? The words which they say against me have come to my ears.
And the Lord said to Moses, How long will this people have no respect for me? how long will they be without faith, in the face of all the signs I have done among them?
But when Pharaoh saw that there was peace for a time, he made his heart hard and did not give ear to them, as the Lord 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.