Commentary on Psalms Volume 3 John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
hearing the voice of God — since he gave them not only one proof of the care he had over them as shepherd, or yearly proof of it, but a continual exemplification of it, there could be no doubt that the Jews were chosen to be his flock.
Psalm 95:8-11
8. Harden not your heart, as in Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness. 54 9. When your fathers tempted me, they proved me, though yet they had seen my work. 10. Forty years, I strove with this generation, 55 and said, They are a people that err in heart,
That is, in the wilderness of Midian, into which the people entered after passing through the Red Sea. In their way towards Horeb, their fourth station was at Rephidim, where they were chargeable with the sinful conduct here referred to.
Paul, in quoting this passage in Hebrews 3:9, joins the words forty years to the concluding part of the preceding verse: "When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years;" whereas, in the Hebrew text, and as Calvin connects them, they form the commencement of the 10th verse. But this depends on the punctuation system of the Masorites, which the Apostle has not followed. It is of little consequence whether the words forty years are connected with the close of the 9th verse or the beginning of the 10th; the sense in either case being substantially the same. If the Israelites tempted God forty years, he strove with them during that period; and if he strove with them for so long a time, it was because they tempted him. The Apostle shows that either of these readings may be indifferently adopted, when, in the 17th verse of that chapter, instead of speaking of the forty years as the space of time during which the Israelites tempted God, he speaks of them as the period during which God was grieved by that rebellious people. "But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness?"