Hebreos 3:17

17 Mas ¿con cuáles se enemistó por cuarenta años? ¿No fue con los que pecaron, cuyos cuerpos cayeron en el desierto

Hebreos 3:17 Meaning and Commentary

Hebrews 3:17

But with whom was he grieved forty years?
&c.] As is said in ( Psalms 95:10 ) , (See Gill on Hebrews 3:10),

was it not with them that had sinned;
not merely by committing personal iniquities, and particular provocations, which all men are guilty of, but by committing public sins; they sinned as a body of men; they joined together in the commission of sin; every sin is grieving to God, because it is contrary to his nature, is an act of enmity to him, is a transgression of his righteous law, and a contempt of his authority; but especially public sins, or the sins of a multitude, and when they are persisted in, which was the case of the Israelites; they sinned against him during the forty years they were in the wilderness; and so long was he grieved with them: the Alexandrian copy reads, "with them that believed not"; which points out the particular sin these men were guilty of, and which was so grieving to God, and suits well with the apostle's design:

whose carcasses fell in the wilderness?
and so never entered into the land of Canaan. They died in the wilderness; and they did not die common and natural deaths, at least not all of them; their deaths were by way of punishment; in a way of wrath; in a judicial way: the Syriac version renders it, "their bones fell in the wilderness"; they lay scattered and unburied, and exposed to view, as an example of divine vengeance, see ( Numbers 14:29 ) .

Hebreos 3:17 In-Context

15 Entre tanto que se dice: Si oyereis HOY su voz, no endurezcáis vuestros corazones, como en la provocación

16 Porque algunos de los que habían salido de Egipto con Moisés, habiendo oído, provocaron; aunque no todos

17 Mas ¿con cuáles se enemistó por cuarenta años? ¿No fue con los que pecaron, cuyos cuerpos cayeron en el desierto

18 ¿Y a cuáles juró que no entrarían en su Reposo, sino a aquellos que no obedecieron

19 Y vemos que no pudieron entrar a causa de su incredulidad