Bible Strands
Hebrews 3:17
And with whom was God angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The author addresses the recipients by tracing God's judgment back to the wilderness generation immediately after identifying the rebels Moses led out of Egypt.
The words — προσώχθισεν (prosōchthisen) translates literally as "was He indignant," and ἁμαρτήσασιν (hamartēsasin) means "having sinned."
The thread — This declaration mirrors Numbers 14:29 and 14:32, where God pronounces that the numbered, rebellious adults will die in the wilderness, and it anchors the surrounding rhetorical questions in Hebrews 3:16 and 3:18 regarding rebellion and disobedience.
Why it lands — It demands recognition that prolonged sin provokes divine anger and that exclusion from God’s rest follows directly from disobedience.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
Cross-references
- Numbers 14:29 Your bodies will fall in this wilderness—all who were numbered in the census, everyone twenty years of age or older—because you have grumbled against Me.
- Numbers 14:22 not one of the men who have seen My glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness—yet have tested Me and disobeyed Me these ten times—
- Numbers 14:32 As for you, however, your bodies will fall in this wilderness.
- Numbers 26:64 Among all these, however, there was not one who had been numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest when they counted the Israelites in the Wilderness of Sinai.
- Jude 1:5 Although you are fully aware of this, I want to remind you that after Jesus had delivered His people out of the land of Egypt, He destroyed those who did not believe.
- Deuteronomy 2:15 Indeed, the LORD’s hand was against them, to eliminate them from the camp, until they had all perished.
- 1 Corinthians 10:1 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud, and that they all passed through the sea.
- Jeremiah 9:22 Declare that this is what the LORD says: “The corpses of men will fall like dung upon the open field, like newly cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather it.”