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Observe here, The party grieved, God; the parties grieving, the people of Israel: The time of both, forty years; the occasion of this grief, sin in general, unbelief in particular, hardness of heart, and final apostasy; the punishment of their sin, their carcases fell in the wilderness.
Learn 1. That sin is the proper object of God's displeasure, the only thing he is displeased with for itself, and with the sinner for sin's sake.
Learn, 2. That public sins, or the sins of societies, are great, very great provocations unto God: It was not for their personal and private sins that God was thus provoked, but for their confederacy in sinning.
Learn, 3. From their exemplary punishment, their carcases fell in the wilderness; that God sometimes makes men who have been wickedly exemplary in sin, to be righteously exemplary in punishment.
The rest here spoken of is the land of Canaan, so called, because God promised it to Abraham, to plant and settle his posterity in it; and because it typified heaven that eternal rest which God has promised for his saints; into this rest the rebellious and unbelieving Israelites must not enter.
God swore the contrary, he swore by himself, he swore in his wrath, he swore to make his sentence irrevocable and immutable.
Lord! thine oath stands as a bar against the Israelites of old, and cuts of all hope of future entrance into thy eternal rest which they have eternally forfeited! To whom swore he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?
Learn hence, 1. That unbelief is the immediate root and cause of all provoking sins. Did men believe the happiness of Heaven, they would not neglect it; did they believe the torments of Hell, they would avoid them.
Learn, 2. That the oath of God is engaged against all unbelief, and no unbeliever shall enter into the rest of God, Heb_3:19. We see they could not enter in because of unbelief.