Hebrews 3:17

17 And with whom was God angry for forty years? He was angry with those who sinned, who died in the 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 This is what the Scripture says: "Today listen to what he says. Do not be stubborn as in the past when you turned against God."

16 Who heard God's voice and was against him? It was all those people Moses led out of Egypt.

17 And with whom was God angry for forty years? He was angry with those who sinned, who died in the desert.

18 And to whom was God talking when he promised that they would never enter his rest? He was talking to those who did not obey him.

19 So we see they were not allowed to enter and have God's rest, because they did not believe.