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For the clearer understanding of these words, we must know, that there is a three-fold rest spoken of in scripture, all which are called His, that is, God's rest, being all of his appointing and providing: namely,
1. The rest of the sabbath day, in remembrance of God's resting from the work of creation.
2. The typical rest in the land of Canaan.
3. An eternal rest with God in heaven, of which the sabbath and the Israelites' rest in Canaan were a type and figure.
Now the apostle's design is, to prove that the rest which God principally intends for his people is this last rest, namely, an everlasting rest with himself in heaven; and this he evidently proves, because if that rest which they had obtained in the land of Canaan, under the conduct of Joshua, called (in Syriac) Jesus, had been all the rest which Almighty God ever intended for them, then it had been needless for David in the 95th Psalm, which was penned a long time after, even some hundreds of years, to make mention of any other rest.
But this he does, and therefore infers, that there is a third rest yet to come, which by the preaching of the gospel was now proposed to them, and that under the same promised and threatenings with the former. If Jesus, of Joshua, had given them the true spiritual and eternal rest here spoken of, in Canaan, then would not David afterward have spoken of another rest after their rest in Canaan; which seeing he has done, the apostle concludes, there must yet remain a farther rest to be enjoyed by the people of God.
From the whole note, That God has by promise given his people a full assurance of enjoying a rest upon condition of faith, and this another manner of rest than that of Canaan, which the Israelites of old did enjoy.