Hebrews 10:30

For we know him that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

These quotations are Deuteronomy 32:35,36; but a check of those verses will show that their form, but not their meaning, has been altered by the author of Hebrews. The quotation is not like the Septuagint, nor like Philo, so what is it? It is the apostle Paul quoting a well-known scripture in his own words; and the proof of this is Romans 12:19 where exactly the same quotation in exactly the same words is found; and, if the scholarship of the world will forgive us, by exactly the same author, namely, Paul himself. It is certainly a gratuitous assumption of intolerable dimensions to make Barnabas, Apollos, Luke, Clement, Mark or anybody else misquote a passage in exactly the same words of Paul's misquotation.

The fact of God's wrath is inherent in his holiness. These verses trumpet the fact that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament, and that he is angry with the wicked every day, that sin shall not stand in his presence, and that the utter and final destruction of everything evil is a part of God's eternal purpose.

The Lord shall judge his people is a pointed warning of judgment for the saints themselves, a fact noted by Peter who said, "And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?" (1 Peter 4:18).

There is by us a line unseen That crosses every path, The hidden boundary between God's mercy and God's wrath.

When King David was offered a choice of three punishments for his sin in numbering Israel, he said, "Let us now fall into the hands of Jehovah, for his mercies are great" (2 Samuel 24:14). However, as Milligan wisely noted, there is a difference in falling into the hands of God for correction and in doing so for judgment.[41] The fearful penalties to be executed upon apostates are exceedingly dreadful.

The living God is an expression used here and in three other passages of Hebrews 3:12; Hebrews 9:14; and Hebrews 12:22; and in this place seems to be given in answer to a possible question of why it is a fearful thing to fall into God's hands. Because he is a living God!