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While there may be a spiritual application of these words, they refer in the first place
to Numb. 14: 28-30:
"As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in Mine ears, so will I do to
you: your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you,
according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have
murmured against Me, doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I
sware to make you dwell therein, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of
Nun."
Psa. 91:, however, is the fulfillment of the succeeding promise of verses 31-34:
"But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they
shall know the land which ye have despised . . . . . Your children shall wander in the
wilderness forty years . . . . . after the number of the days in which ye searched the land
. . . . . and ye shall know My breach of promise."
So in Psa. 90: 9 we read:
"For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told."
But in Psa. 91: 7-16 we read:
"A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not
come nigh thee . . . . . with long life will I satisfy him, and shew him My salvation."
And so Psa. 95: takes up the story, and calls upon Israel to hear the voice of the
Lord and not to harden their hearts as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation
in the wilderness. Let us remember that in Numb. 14:, where this great provoking is
recorded, those who were thus doomed to wander and to die in the wilderness were A
PARDONED PEOPLE (Numb. 14: 20). Those who were warned about the evil heart of
unbelief were "holy brethren". Hebrews is not dealing with the gospel of initial
salvation; it deals with believers who, though delivered from their spiritual Egypt, united
with Christ as were Israel when they were "baptized into Moses", partaking of the
blessings of the wilderness provision "bread from heaven" yet, like those who were
intimidated by the report of the ten spies, lost their place in the land of promise. We
observe in I Cor. 10: :1-5:
"That ALL were under the cloud, and ALL passed through the sea; and were ALL
baptized unto Moses . . . . . did ALL eat the same spiritual meat; and did ALL drink of
the same spiritual drink . . . . . but with MANY of them God was not well pleased."
In the immediately preceding context of these words, the apostle had said:
"They which run in a race run ALL, but ONE receiveth the prize. So run, that ye may
obtain" (I Cor. 9: 24),
and Heb. 12: picks up the thread and continues:
"Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and
the Finisher of faith; Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 12: 1, 2).