How blessed is the man who fears always,
but he who hardens his heart will fall into calamity.

Proverbs 28:14

Making the decision to harden our hearts against the LORD (All Caps, The I AM, Yahweh) is a very dangerous thing to do. I cannot do it any real justice because I am not, in any way, an Old Testament Scholar and because it cannot be done at all in just 500 words or less. But because this warning in Proverbs 28:14 is so important, I will attempt to give you a ridiculously short overview in four blogs over Days 28-31. 

As you will see, this ‘promise’ of what happens when you harden your heart against the LORD is a very long and sad story that grieved God and was disastrous for a whole generation of Israel! This is all found in the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy. But, the prophetic pictures pointing to Jesus Christ and the Gospel from these books are found all through the rest of Scripture. 

[NOTE: If you are ever given opportunity to learn in detail from this portion of Israel’s history, do so! You will gain so much! I plan to find a resource myself and dig deeper. For the purpose of 31 Days in Proverbs, I have been greatly helped by an quite old commentary by Matthew Henry (1662 –  1714) which I found on my go to online help; The Blue Letter Bible.]

It all begins with Moses and the impossible task of leading a murmuring, grumpy, malcontent generation out of the land of Egypt and into the Promised Land of Canaan which is described in the OT as Israel’s place of rest. But the overall storyline is that the adults [we will call them the first generation] who God led out of Egypt complained and challenged and contested God all the way up to the first opportunity to enter Canaan and then through their 40 years of wondering in the wilderness and their extermination during those 40 years and then their children being given the Promised Land instead of this first generation. Here are just two examples of how they tested the LORD…there were many!

He [Moses] named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel,
and because they tested the LORD saying,
“Is the LORD among us, or not?” [Brackets Mine]

Exodus 17:7

Matthew Henry saw Exodus 17:7 as a critical step of hardening of hearts in that first generation. It was more than just whining because of thirst, it was questioning if Yahweh even existed. As we will see over these days, Israel’s first generation out of Egypt never softened theirs hearts, their souls, to their Creator God. They did not claim deep within themselves His promises. They never made it personal.

Next, Matthew Henry sees the refusal to go into the Promised Land because of the bad report given by 10 of the 12 spies, as the full hardening of hearts of these supposed elders of Israel. There is A LOT that happens between these two examples of hardening hearts which you and I can study further on our own. For now, we need to know that the two spies Joshua and Caleb, alone, believed God’s promise to give Israel the land no matter the obstacles that would stand in their way. The ‘calamity’ awaiting this first generation, as mentioned in our key verse for today, was severe and eternal.

Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. 

Numbers 14:22-23

From Matthew Henry’s Commentary…

“Their sin was unbelief; they tempted God and proved him; they questioned whether they might take his word, and insisted upon further security before they would go forward to Canaan, by sending spies; and, when those discourage them, they protested against the sufficiency of the divine power and promise, and would make a captain and return to Egypt. (Num. 14:3,4) This is called rebellion, (Duet 1:26,32)”

This was a bleak season of hard hearts in Israel’s history that grieved God. We will see on Day 29 just how deep God’s grief was in one of King David’s songs: Psalm 95.