Ebrei 3:17

17 E chi furon quelli di cui si disgustò durante quarant’anni? Non furon essi quelli che peccarono, i cui cadaveri caddero nel deserto?

Ebrei 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 ) .

Ebrei 3:17 In-Context

15 mentre ci vien detto: Oggi, se udite la sua voce, non indurate i vostri cuori, come nel dì della provocazione.

16 Infatti, chi furon quelli che dopo averlo udito lo provocarono? Non furon forse tutti quelli ch’erano usciti dall’Egitto, condotti da Mosè?

17 E chi furon quelli di cui si disgustò durante quarant’anni? Non furon essi quelli che peccarono, i cui cadaveri caddero nel deserto?

18 E a chi giurò Egli che non entrerebbero nel suo riposo, se non a quelli che furon disubbidienti?

19 E noi vediamo che non vi poterono entrare a motivo dell’incredulità.