10 Forty long years I was grieved with that generation, And said, "It is a people that errs in their heart. They have not known my ways."
With whom was he displeased forty years? Wasn't it with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
"How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? How long will mockers delight themselves in mockery, And fools hate knowledge? Turn at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make known my words to you. Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no one has paid attention; But you have ignored all my counsel, And wanted none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you; When calamity overtakes you like a storm, When your disaster comes on like a whirlwind; When distress and anguish come on you. Then will they call on me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me; Because they hated knowledge, And didn't choose the fear of Yahweh.
Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.
Your children shall be wanderers in the wilderness forty years, and shall bear your prostitution, until your dead bodies be consumed in the wilderness. After the number of the days in which you spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, shall you bear your iniquities, even forty years, and you shall know my alienation.
It happened in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel, according to all that Yahweh had given him in commandment to them;
The days in which we came from Kadesh-barnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, were thirty-eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were consumed from the midst of the camp, as Yahweh swore to them. Moreover the hand of Yahweh was against them, to destroy them from the midst of the camp, until they were consumed. So it happened, when all the men of war were consumed and dead from among the people,
O Yahweh, why do you make us to err from your ways, and harden our heart from your fear? Return for your servants' sake, the tribes of your inheritance.
Your habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, says Yahweh.
This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn't come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God."
For a period of about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness.
Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 95
Commentary on Psalms 95 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Jahve is called the Rock of our salvation (as in Psalms 89:27, cf. Psalms 94:22) as being its firm and sure ground. Visiting the house of God, one comes before God's face; קדּם פּני , praeoccupare faciem , is equivalent to visere ( visitare ). תּודה is not confessio peccati , but laudis . The Beth before תודה is the Beth of accompaniment, as in Micah 6:6; that before זמרות (according to 2 Samuel 23:1 a name for psalms, whilst מזמר can only be used as a technical expression) is the Beth of the medium.
The adorableness of God receives a threefold confirmation: He is exalted above all gods as King, above all things as Creator, and above His people as Shepherd and Leader. אלהים (gods) here, as in Psalms 96:4., Psalms 97:7, Psalms 97:9, and frequently, are the powers of the natural world and of the world of men, which the Gentiles deify and call kings (as Moloch Molech, the deified fire), which, however, all stand under the lordship of Jahve, who is infinitely exalted above everything that is otherwise called god (Psalms 96:4; Psalms 97:9). The supposition that תּועפות הרים denotes the pit-works ( μέταλλα ) of the mountains (Böttcher), is at once improbable, because to all appearance it is intended to be the antithesis to מחקרי־ארץ , the shafts of the earth. The derivation from ועף ( יעף ), κάμνειν, κοπιᾶν , also does not suit תועפות in Numbers 23:22; Numbers 24:8, for “fatigues” and “indefatigableness” are notions that lie very wide apart. The כּסף תּועפות of Job 22:25 might more readily be explained according to this “silver of fatigues,” i.e., silver that the fatiguing labour of mining brings to light, and תועפות הרים in the passage before us, with Gussetius, Geier, and Hengstenberg: cacumina montium quia defatigantur qui eo ascendunt , prop. ascendings = summits of the mountains, after which כסף תועפות , Job 22:25, might also signify “silver of the mountain-heights.” But the lxx, which renders δόξα in the passages in Numbers and τὰ ὕψη τῶν ὀρέων in the passage before us, leads one to a more correct track. The verb יעף ( ועף ), transposed from יפע ( ופע ), goes back to the root יף , וף , to stand forth, tower above, to be high, according to which תועפות = תופעות signifies eminentiae , i.e., towerings = summits, or prominences = high (the highest) perfection (vid., on Job 22:25). In the passage before us it is a synonym of the Arabic mı̂fan , mı̂fâtun , pars terrae eminens (from Arab. wfâ = יפע , prop. instrumentally: a means of rising above, viz., by climbing), and of the names of eminences derived from Arab. yf' (after which Hitzig renders: the teeth of the mountains). By reason of the fact that Jahve is the Owner (cf. 1 Samuel 2:8), because the Creator of all things, the call to worship, which concerns no one so nearly as it does Israel, the people, which before other peoples is Jahve's creation, viz., the creation of His miraculously mighty grace, is repeated. In the call or invitation, השׁתּחוה signifies to stretch one's self out full length upon the ground, the proper attitude of adoration; כּרע , to curtsey, to totter; and בּרך , Arabic baraka , starting from the radical signification flectere , to kneel down, in genua ( πρόχνυ , pronum = procnum ) procumbere , 2 Chronicles 6:13 (cf. Hölemann, Bibelstudien , i. 135f.). Beside עם מרעיתו , people of His pasture, צאן ידו is not the flock formed by His creating hand (Augustine: ipse gratiâ suâ nos oves fecit ), but, after Genesis 30:35, the flock under His protection, the flock led and defended by His skilful, powerful hand. Böttcher renders: flock of His charge; but יד in this sense (Jeremiah 6:3) signifies only a place, and “flock of His place” would be poetry and prose in one figure.
The second decastich begins in the midst of the Masoretic Psalms 95:7. Up to this point the church stirs itself up to a worshipping appearing before its God; now the voice of God (Hebrews 4:7), earnestly admonishing, meets it, resounding from out of the sanctuary. Since שׁמע בּ signifies not merely to hear, but to hear obediently, Psalms 95:7 cannot be a conditioning protasis to what follows. Hengstenberg wishes to supply the apodosis: “then will He bless you, His people;” but אם in other instances too (Psalms 81:9; Psalms 139:19; Proverbs 24:11), like לוּ , has an optative signification, which it certainly has gained by a suppression of a promissory apodosis, but yet without the genius of the language having any such in mind in every instance. The word היּום placed first gives prominence to the present, in which this call to obedience goes forth, as a decisive turning-point. The divine voice warningly calls to mind the self-hardening of Israel, which came to light at Merîbah, on the day of Massah. What is referred to, as also in Psalms 81:8, is the tempting of God in the second year of the Exodus on account of the failing of water in the neighbourhood of Horeb, at the place which is for this reason called Massah u - Merı̂bah (Exodus 17:1-7); from which is to be distinguished the tempting of God in the fortieth year of the Exodus at Merı̂bah , viz., at the waters of contention near Kadesh (written fully Mê - Merı̂bah Kadesh , or more briefly Mê - Merı̂bah ), Numbers 20:2-13 (cf. on Psalms 78:20). Strictly כמריבה signifies nothing but instar Meribae , as in Psalms 83:10 instar Midianitarum ; but according to the sense, כּ is equivalent to כּעל . Psalms 106:32, just as כּיום is equivalent to כּביום . On אשׁר , quum , cf. Deuteronomy 11:6. The meaning of גּם־ראוּ פעלי is not they also ( גם as in Psalms 52:7) saw His work; for the reference to the giving of water out of the rock would give a thought that is devoid of purpose here, and the assertion is too indefinite for it to be understood of the judgment upon those who tempted God (Hupfeld and Hitzig). It is therefore rather to be rendered: notwithstanding (ho'moos, Ew. §354, a ) they had (= although they had, cf. גם in Isaiah 49:15) seen His work (His wondrous guiding and governing), and might therefore be sure that He would not suffer them to be destroyed. The verb קוּט coincides with κοτέω, κότος . בּדּור .ען , for which the lxx has τῇ γενεᾷ ἐκείνη , is anarthrous in order that the notion may be conceived of more qualitatively than relatively: with a (whole) generation. With ואמר Jahve calls to mind the repeated declarations of His vexation concerning their heart, which was always inclined towards error which leads to destruction - declarations, however, which bore no fruit. Just this ineffectiveness of His indignation had as its result that ( אשׁר , not ὅτι but ὥστε , as in Genesis 13:16; Deuteronomy 28:27, Deuteronomy 28:51; 2 Kings 9:37, and frequently) He sware, etc. ( אם = verily not, Gesen. §155, 2, f , with the emphatic future form in ûn which follows). It is the oath in Numbers 14:27. that is meant. The older generation died in the desert, and therefore lost the entering into the rest of God, by reason of their disobedience. If now, many centuries after Moses, they are invited in the Davidic Psalter to submissive adoration of Jahve, with the significant call: “To-day if ye will hearken to His voice!” and with a reference to the warning example of the fathers, the obedience of faith, now as formerly, has therefore to look forward to the gracious reward of entering into God's rest, which the disobedient at that time lost; and the taking possession of Canaan was, therefore, not as yet the final מנוּחה (Deuteronomy 12:9). This is the connection of the wider train of thought which to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews Hebrews 3:1, Hebrews 4:1, follows from this text of the Psalm.