Psalms 95:6

"Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before Jehovah our Maker:For he is our God,And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.Today, oh that ye would hear his voice."

"Oh come" (Psalms 95:6) in the Latin is Venite, adopted as the opening word of the chorus in the famed Latin hymn, Adeste Fideles, "Oh Come All Ye Faithful,"[5] in which hymn the line, Venite Adoremus, is repeated three times.

"The people of his pasture" (Psalms 95:7). We might have expected "sheep of his pasture" here, since it is sheep and not people who need pasture. However, such mixed metaphors are very common in scripture. Moreover, in this arrangement, the metaphor of the Lord himself as "The Good Shepherd" automatically comes to mind.

"Today, oh that ye would hear his voice" (Psalms 95:7). These words form the opening line in Hebrews 3:7, where this passage is used as the background of what is written there, Psalms 95:11, being quoted directly. "The passage in Hebrews 3:7-4:13, expounding this psalm, forbids us to confine its thrust to Israel. "The `Today' of which it speaks is this very moment; the `ye' is none other than ourselves, and the promised `rest' is not Canaan, but salvation."[6]

One of the most important revelations in the New Testament turns upon this very passage. Hebrews 4:4 ties the "rest" mentioned in Psalms 95:11 with God's "rest" on the seventh day of creation, demanding that the present time, "this very moment," as Kidner expressed it, be identified with God's resting "on the seventh day." The meaning of this is profound. H. Cotterill, the bishop of Edinburgh, declared that from this passage in Hebrews (Hebrews 7:3-4:13), "We must conclude that the seventh day of God's rest which followed the six days of creation is not yet completed."[7] The general lack of understanding this has led to many errors of interpretation. When God told Adam and Eve that they would surely die "on the day" that they ate of the forbidden tree, it could not have meant "within twenty-four hours," but during the current dispensation of God's grace. Thus Adam and Eve shall yet perish in the person of all their posterity, excepting only the redeemed. (For further comment on this, See Vol. 1 (Genesis) of my Pentateuchal commentaries, pp. 30,31.)