Psalms 95:10

"Forty years long was I grieved with that nation,

And said, It is a people that do err in their heart,

And they have not known my ways."

Alas, the tragic story of the wilderness sojourn of Israel is prophetic of the church of Christ itself. The current dispensation of God's grace corresponds in many ways to the probationary journey of Israel from the Red Sea to the Jordan, typical, as they are, of the Christian's journey from the waters of his baptism to the Jordan of death.

Only two exceptions survived the death of that generation, namely, Caleb and Joshua, and these two symbolize the "few" that shall be saved among the legions of alleged believers in Christ. Christians, in ordering their walk before God, should ever remember that, "Narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life; and few there be that find it" (Matthew 7:14).

Those scholars who like to dwell on the liturgical use of this psalm, generally assign it to the great Jewish Festival of Tabernacles. At Psalms 95:7, above, a priest is supposed to have interrupted the singing with the blunt warning of Psalms 95:7-11, recounting the disaster that came to Israel in the wilderness, resulting in the loss of an entire generation of them.

Kidner pointed out the appropriateness of this warning to such an occasion as the Feast of Tabernacles. That great Jewish feast commemorated the stirring events of the Wilderness Wanderings; and the people, recalling those days of the homelessness of the people, re-lived those eventful times by constructing brash arbors (as we would call them) and living in those make-shift residences during the week of the festival.

Kidner noted that, "If Israel, in holiday mood, remembering the history of the Wilderness, and perhaps romanticizing it (as all of us are tempted to do for `the good old days'), actually received this warning at the Feast of Tabernacles, it would have been a cold douche of realism."[9] It would have starkly reminded the whole nation of how utterly displeased was the Heavenly Father with that first generation that he led out of Egyptian slavery. Let it be noted that this psalm's being identified with the feast of Tabernacles cannot exclude its Davidic authorship.