8 Harden not your heart as `in' Meribah, As `in' the day of Massah in the wilderness,
and he calleth the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the `strife' of the sons of Israel, and because of their `trying' Jehovah, saying, `Is Jehovah in our midst or not?'
`Ye do not try Jehovah your God as ye tried in Massah;
and why do ye harden your heart as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their heart? do they not -- when He hath rolled Himself upon them -- send them away, and they go?
and the people strive with Moses, and say, `Give us water, and we drink.' And Moses saith to them, `What? -- ye strive with me, what? -- ye try Jehovah?'
and to remind you I intend, you knowing once this, that the Lord, a people out of the land of Egypt having saved, again those who did not believe did destroy;
See, may ye not refuse him who is speaking, for if those did not escape who refused him who upon earth was divinely speaking -- much less we who do turn away from him who `speaketh' from heaven,
in its being said, `To-day, if His voice ye may hear, ye may not harden your hearts, as in the provocation,' for certain having heard did provoke, but not all who did come out of Egypt through Moses; but with whom was He grieved forty years? was it not with those who did sin, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? and to whom did He swear that they shall not enter into His rest, except to those who did not believe? -- and we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.
ye may not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of the temptation in the wilderness, in which tempt Me did your fathers, they did prove Me, and saw My works forty years;
but, according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou dost treasure up to thyself wrath, in a day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God,
`And Jehovah heareth the voice of your words, and is wroth, and sweareth, saying, Not one of these men of this evil generation doth see the good land which I have sworn to give to your fathers,
`Until when hath this evil company that which they are murmuring against Me? the murmurings of the sons of Israel, which they are murmuring against Me, I have heard;
And Jehovah saith unto Moses, `Until when doth this people despise Me? and until when do they not believe in Me, for all the signs which I have done in its midst?
And Pharaoh seeth that there hath been a respite, and he hath hardened his heart, and hath not hearkened unto them, as Jehovah hath spoken.
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.