Psalm 95:7-11
‘Today, if you will hear His Voice — do not harden your heart, as in the provocation and in the day of temptation in the wilderness — when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work! Forty years long, I was grieved with this generation! I said: “This is a people that err in their heart, and they have not known my ways!” Unto whom I swore in my wrath, that they should not enter into My rest!’ Psalm 95:8-11.
Calvin commented: “The Greek version joins it (verse 7) with the verse that follows (verse 8) — ‘today, if you will hear His Voice, do not harden your hearts!’ It reads well, in this connection…. The posterity of Abraham were the flock of God…. He had placed His Law in the midst of them….
“The expression ‘today’ intimates how emphatically the(y)…, in hearing God’s Voice, were His people…. He bids them recognize God as their Shepherd, inasmuch as they heard His Voice….
“‘Harden not your heart!’… The Psalmist, having extolled and commended the kindness of God their Shepherd, takes occasion — as they were stiffnecked and disobedient — to remind them of their duty as His flock…to yield a pliable and meek submission….
“He enlarges in several expressions upon the hardness of heart evinced by the people…. By hardness of heart, he no doubt means any kind of contempt shown to the Word of God…. Some fastidiously put it away from them, after they had received it…. Others proudly reject it. While again, there are men who openly vent their rage against it with…spite and blasphemy….
“What an execrable thing contempt of God’s Word is!… The man who simply treats the Word of God with neglect and fails to obey it, is said here to have a hard and stony heart…. The man who will not permit himself to be ruled by God’s Word, makes that heart which was hard before — harder still…. Every man who disobeys God therein, hardens himself….
“The Jews were…most liable to be deceived…, ever accustomed as they were to boast of their fathers! The Psalmist, accordingly, would detach them from the(ir) fathers…. The Psalmist, considering that they wandered in error under so much light as they enjoyed, speaks of their stupidity as amounting to madness….
“As they multiplied their provocations, it became the more evident that — being incorrigible — they had justly been cut off from God’s rest…. The land of Canaan is called God’s ‘rest’ — in reference to the promise…. God…has revealed His Son (‘His Voice’ in the wilderness!), and is daily inviting us to come to Him…. The Apostle (Hebrews 4:1-11)…takes occasion to compare the old Sabbath or ‘rest’ under the Law…, with the newness of spiritual life.”
Calvin also said in his Institutes II:5:11: “The Psalmist…exhorts the men of his time, ‘Do not harden your heart!’ (Psalm 95:8)…. The rebellion lies in human depravity!” For the wicked shall never enter into the rest of God! Shall you?
