Text -- Hebrews 3:8-19 (NET)

3:8 “Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness. 3:9 “There your fathers tested me and tried me, and they saw my works for forty years. 3:10 “Therefore, I became provoked at that generation and said, ‘Their hearts are always wandering and they have not known my ways.’ 3:11 “As I swore in my anger, ‘They will never enter my rest!’” 3:12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has an evil, unbelieving heart that forsakes the living God. 3:13 But exhort one another each day, as long as it is called “Today,” that none of you may become hardened by sin’s deception. 3:14 For we have become partners with Christ, if in fact we hold our initial confidence firm until the end. 3:15 As it says, “Oh, that today you would listen as he speaks! Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” 3:16 For which ones heard and rebelled? Was it not all who came out of Egypt under Moses’ leadership? 3:17 And against whom was God provoked for forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the wilderness? 3:18 And to whom did he swear they would never enter into his rest, except those who were disobedient? 3:19 So we see that they could not enter because of unbelief.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Heb 3:9

¹ tn Grk “tested me by trial.”

NET Notes: Heb 3:10

¹ tn Grk “they are wandering in the heart.”

NET Notes: Heb 3:11

¹ tn Grk “if they shall enter my rest,” a Hebrew idiom expressing an oath that something will certainly not happen.

NET Notes: Heb 3:12

¹ tn Or “take care.”

² tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 2:11.

³ tn Grk “that there not be in any of you.”

⁴ tn Or “deserts,” “rebels against.”

⁵ tn Grk “in forsaking the living God.”

NET Notes: Heb 3:14

¹ tn Grk “the beginning of the confidence.”

NET Notes: Heb 3:15

¹ tn Grk “while it is said.”

² tn Grk “today if you hear his voice.”

³ sn A quotation from Ps 95:7b-8.

NET Notes: Heb 3:16

¹ tn Grk “through Moses.”

NET Notes: Heb 3:17

¹ tn Grk “he”; in the translation the referent (God) has been specified for clarity.

² sn An allusion to God’s judgment pronounced in Num 14:29, 32.

NET Notes: Heb 3:19

¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “So” to indicate a summary or conclusion to the argument of the preceding paragraph.