Hebrews 3:17

17 But to whom was he wrathed forty years? Whether not to them that sinned, whose carrions were cast down in desert [into desert]?

Hebrews 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 ) .

Hebrews 3:17 In-Context

15 While it is said, to day, if ye have heard the voice of him, do not ye harden your hearts, as in that wrathing.

16 For some men hearing wrathed [Soothly some hearing wrathed], but not all they that went out of Egypt by Moses.

17 But to whom was he wrathed forty years? Whether not to them that sinned, whose carrions were cast down in desert [into desert]?

18 And to whom swore he, that they should not enter into the rest of him [+To whom he swore soothly, to not enter into his rest], no but to them that were unbelieveful?

19 And we see, that they might not enter into the rest of him for unbelief.