2. The Faith of the Antediluvians (11:4-7)
Thus "the visible came forth from the invisible" (NEB). But how do we know this? By faith, says our author. Greek speculation about the formation of the ordered world out of formless matter had influenced Jewish thinkers like Philo and the author of the book of Wisdom;23 the writer to the Hebrews is more biblical in his reasoning and affirms the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, a doctrine uncongenial to Greek thought. The faith by which he accepts it is faith in the divine revelation; the first chapter of Genesis is probably upper most in his mind,24 since he is about to trace seven living examples of faith from the subsequent chapters of that book.
2. The Faith of the Antediluvians (11:4-7)
4 By faith Abel offered to God25 a better26 sacrifice than Cain; by virtue of this sacrifice he was attested as a righteous man, for God bore witness to the gifts he brought,27 and through it he continues to speak28 even after he has died.
7 By faith Noah, divinely warned about things not yet seen, was moved by reverent submission and built an ark to save his household. By this means he put the world in the wrong and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
4 The first example of faith that our author finds in the biblical record is Abel. According to the narrative of Gen. 4:3-5, Abel and his elder brother Cain brought their offerings to God at the appropriate season; Abel brought "of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions," since he was a shepherd, while Cain, the agriculturalist, brought "an offering of the fruit of the ground." In either case the material of the offering was suitable to the offerer's vocation; yet "Yahweh had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." Why was there this discrimination? Cain was dejected because his offering was disregarded, but God pointed out to him the way of acceptance: "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it" (Gen. 4:7). This rendering of the Masoretic text is quite in line with the later prophetic teaching about sacrifice; sacrifice is acceptable to God not for its material content, but insofar as it is the outward expression of a devoted and obedient heart.31 Let Cain gain the mastery over the sin which threatens to be his undoing,32 and his sacrifice will be accepted as readily as Abel's was.
The Septuagint version, however, suggests that there was a ritual reason for the rejection of Cain's sacrifice; according to it, God says to Cain: "Have you not sinned if you offer it rightly without dividing it rightly?" (Gen. 4:7).33 Other ancient interpretations explained its rejection, in contrast to the acceptance of Abel's sacrifice, in terms of the substance of the two offerings. So Philo: "Abel's offering was living, Cain's was lifeless. His was prior in age and quality, Cain's was inferior. His was superior in strength and fatness, Cain's was weaker."34 Similarly Josephus: "The brothers having decided to sacrifice to God, Cain brought the fruits of the cultivated ground and of trees, while Abel brought milk and the firstlings of his flocks. This latter offering gave the greater pleasure to God, who is honored by those things which grow spontaneously and in accordance with nature, and not by those things which are forcibly produced by the ingenuity of covetous man"35-a farfetched distinction indeed, although Josephus was not the last commentator on this passage to suggest that the shepherd's life involves less expenditure of energy than that of the agriculturalist! "Cain brought of the fruits of the earth, that is to say, less valuable things," says the Midrash Genesis Rabba, 36 while the Palestinian Targum makes Abel say to Cain: "The fruits of my works were better than yours and took precedence over yours; so it was my sacrifice that was accepted as well-pleasing." A more recent variation on these accounts sees the distinction in that Abel's offering involved the shedding of blood, apart from which, as our author has said above, the law knows no forgiveness (Heb. 9:22).37 But it is nowhere suggested in the Genesis narrative that it was a sin offering which the two brothers brought; it was.in either case the appropriate presentation of the firstfruits of their increase. The unvarnished Masoretic text makes the situation plain enough; since Cain was told that he would be accepted if he did well, it follows that Abel was accepted because he did well-because, in other words, he was righteous. And in fact the righteousness of Abel is emphasized elsewhere in the New Testament: our Lord refers to "the blood of Abel the righteous" (Matt. 23:35)38 and John tells us that Cain killed his brother "because his own deeds were evil, and his brother's righteous" (1 John 3:12).39 To the same effect our author says that Abel "was attested as a righteous man." How? Because "God bore this witness to the gifts he brought." This echoes the Septuagint rendering of Gen. 4:4, "God looked [i.e., with pleasure] on Abel and his gifts."40 The abiding principle of Scripture in this regard is summed up in the words of Prov. 15:8, "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to Yahweh; but the prayer of the upright is his delight."
But how could it be known that it was "by faith" that Abel brought God a more acceptable sacrifice than his brother? Probably the close association between righteousness and faith in 10:38, "my righteous one will live by faith," was ground sufficient in our author's eyes for his statement about Abel's faith; moreover, his affirmation in v. 6 below, while primarily applicable to Enoch, is equally applicable to Abel: "without faith it is impossible to give him [God] pleasure"-and since Abel manifestly pleased him, it follows that Abel lived and acted by faith.
Through his faith, too, Abel continues to speak, even in death. When God accused Cain of Abel's murder, he said: "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground" (Gen. 4:10).41 Our author's point appears to be that Abel is still appealing to God for vindication, until he obtains it in full in the judgment to come. The idea in that case is paralleled in Rev. 6:9-11, where the souls of the martyrs cry aloud for vindication, and are told that they must wait until the full tale of martyrs is complete. It has been held, on the other hand,42 that our author simply means that Abel, by his faith, bears abiding witness to succeeding ages; but that more than this was in his mind is suggested by Heb. 12:24, where he says that the purifying blood of Christ "has something better to say than Abel's"-a clear reference to Gen. 4:10.
5 The second example of faith is Enoch. All the Hebrew Bible has to say of him is that he was bom to Jared when the latter was 162 years old, and then, that "when Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah.43 Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters 44 Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (Gen. 5:18, 21-24). In the Septuagint the repeated clause "Enoch walked with God" is rendered "Enoch pleased God"45-from a desire, no doubt, to make the language less anthropomorphic-and the words "he was not; for God took him" are rendered "he was not found, because God translated him."46 Our author follows the Septuagint here as elsewhere.
In one well-known strand of Jewish and Christian tradition Enoch appears as the recipient of special revelations about the spirit-world and the ages to come;47 in this role he appears once in the New Testament, when Jude (vv. 14f.) quotes the prophecy of "Enoch, the seventh from Adam," about the coming of the Lord with his holy myriads to execute judgment on the ungodly (1 Enoch 1:9). More generally he is said to have been "the first among men that are born on earth who learned writing and knowledge and wisdom" (Jub. 4:17). Of all this our author has nothing to say; he is more in line with the school of thought which regarded Enoch as the typically righteous man. Ben Sira, for example, says:
His grandson, turning these words from Hebrew into Greek, conformed them to the sense of the Septuagint:
More striking still is the account of Enoch in Wisdom 4:10-15:
Here Enoch is brought forward as the beau ideal of righteousness, the type of the person who, according to his enemies, "professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord" (Wisdom 2:13). So, in Jub. 10:17, Enoch is perfect in righteousness, excelling even Noah in this respect, "for Enoch's office was ordained for a testimony to the generations of the world, so that he should recount all the deeds of generation unto generation, till the day of judgment" (here Enoch's righteousness is linked with his prophetic ministry). And in 1 Enoch 71:14, in the conclusion of the section commonly called the Parables of Enoch, Enoch is acclaimed by the interpreting angel as the ideal just man:
It is, however, specifically as an example of faith that our author adduces Enoch here. Righteousness and faith, as we have seen already, are inseparably associated in his mind. If he is asked why Enoch should be regarded as a man of faith, his answer is that otherwise God would have had no pleasure in him.51 But the record makes it plain that Enoch did please God;52 the Septuagint paraphrase of the Hebrew idiom "walked with God"53 is completely consistent with the teaching of the great prophets, according to which walking humbly with God, together with the practice of justice and lovingkindness, is God's fundamental requirement of human beings.54
6 Apart from faith neither Enoch nor anyone else could ever have been pleasing to God. The faith which our author has in mind embraces belief in the invisible spiritual order, and belief in the promises of God which have not yet been fulfilled. Belief in the invisible spiritual order involves, first and foremost, belief in him who is "King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God" (1 Tim. 1:17); and belief in God carries with it necessarily belief in his word. It is not belief in the existence of a God that is meant, but belief in the existence of the God who once declared his will to the fathers through the prophets and in these last days has spoken in his Son. Those who approach55 him can do so in full confidence that he exists, that his word is true, and that he will never put off or disappoint the person who sincerely seeks him. For all that he has revealed of himself, whether through the prophets or in his Son, assures us that he is altogether worthy of his people's trust.
The reward desired by those who seek him is the joy of finding him; he himself proves to be their "exceeding joy" (Ps. 43:4).
No doubt our author states the basic principle, as revealed by the record of Enoch, for the benefit and encouragement of his readers. Of their desire to please God he has no doubt; he insists, however, that they cannot please him apart from faith-the faith which not only believes that he exists but waits patiently and confidently for the reward promised to those who seek him.
7 The next example of faith illustrates this willingness to believe that what God has promised he will certainly perform. Noah was a righteous man, like Abel; he walked with God, as did Enoch;57 but what is emphasized here is that when God announced that he would do something unprecedented in the experience of Noah and his contemporaries, Noah took him at his word, and showed that he did so by making practical preparations against the day when that word would come true. Noah received a divine communication58 that a deluge would sweep over the earth. Such a catastrophe had never been known before, but Noah's faith supplied the proof of "things not seen."59 The building of an ark far inland must have seemed an absurd procedure to his neighbors; but in the event his faith was vindicated and their unbelief was condemned: "through his faith he put the whole world in the wrong" (NEB). He paid careful heed60 to the divine admonition and got ready the means by which he and his household would be kept safe when the deluge broke; thus he became a living witness to the truth of the scripture already cited: "my righteous one will live by faith" (10:38). Thus, says our author, he "became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith"; if the Genesis narrative represents God as saying to him, "I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation" (Gen. 7:1), it was because of his ready acceptance of what God had said. Of him as of Enoch the statement is true: "without faith it is impossible to please God."61
The Jewish wisdom writers not unnaturally found in Noah an outstanding example of true wisdom. "When the earth was flooded," says the author of the book of Wisdom, "wisdom saved it again, steering the righteous man in a cheap structure of wood" (Wisdom 10:4). Ben Sira speaks at greater length:
63. Sir. 44:17f. Cf. Gen. 9:8-17 for the covenant with Noah.
In other places in the New Testament the flood of Noah's day is an illustration of sudden judgment, a foreshadowing of the advent of the Son of Man;64 his safe passage through the waters which overwhelmed others is a figure of Christian baptism;65 he himself is described as a preacher of righteousness.66 But here it is his faith that is set in relief, and it cannot be said that our author had to look far to discover faith in the Old Testament story of Noah. The great gospel terms righteousness and grace appear first in relation to him, as far as the canonical order of Scripture goes;67 and the quality of his faith was proved by his prompt obedience: "Noah ... did all that God commanded him" (Gen. 6:22).
3. The Faith ofAbraham and Sarah (11:8-12)
8 By faith Abraham, in obedience to the call of God,68 went forth into a place which he was to receive as his inheritance: he went forth, not knowing where he was going.
9 By faith he took up residence in the land which he had been promised, as though it belonged to others; he became a tent-dweller, as did Isaac and Jacob, fellow-heirs of the same promise.
10 For he looked forward to the city which has the (true) foundations, the city of which God is the architect and builder.
11 By faith-Sarah herself being barren69-he received power to beget a child7° even after the natural season of life,71 because he reckoned the one who gave the promise to be trustworthy.
8 Of Abraham's title to be included in this catalog there can be no ques tion. The faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah might have to be inferred from what is recorded of them (although for all three of them it is a certain inference); but Abraham's faith is explicitly attested in the Genesis narrative: "he believed Yahweh; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). Our author has already referred to Abraham's faith in the promise of God and his patient waiting for its fulfilment;74 here he enlarges on the same theme. Repeatedly throughout his career Abraham acted as a man who walked by faith and not by sight, and made good his claim to be recognized by all subsequent ages as the father of the faithful. The Levites' prayer of confession in the days of Nehemiah and Ezra recalled God's dealings with him in these terms: "Thou ... didst choose Abram and bring him forth out of Ur of the Chaldaeans and give him the name Abraham; and thou didst find his heart faithful before thee, and didst make with him the covenant to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanite, . . . and thou hast fulfilled thy promise, for thou art righteous" (Neh. 9:7f.). Ben Sira includes this panegyric on Abraham in his "Praise of the Elders":
The author of the book of Wisdom refers to Abraham when he says that "Wisdom ... recognized the righteous man and preserved him blameless before God" (Wisdom 10:5). Paul invokes the example of Abraham in support of his claim that the gospel way of righteousness by faith is "attested by the law and the prophets" (Rom. 3:21); if people are justified by their works, then Abraham of all men has something of his own to glory in, but the testimony of Holy Scripture is clear that it was his faith in God that was reckoned to him for righteousness (Rom. 4:3-5; Gal. 3:6-9). Stephen begins his defense before the Sanhedrin by reminding them how "the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, `Depart from your land and from your kindred and go into the land which I will show you.' Then he departed from the land of the Chal daeans, and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land, in which you are now living; yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised to give it to him in possession, and to his posterity after him, though he had no child" (Acts 7:2-5).75 Stephen's point is that, even in the promised land, Abraham lived a pilgrim life; and our author makes precisely this point in the exposition which follows.
Abraham's faith was manifested first of all by the readiness with which he left his home at the call of God, for the promise of a new home which he had never seen before and which, even after he entered it, he never possessed in person. "By faith Abraham, in obedience. . ."; faith and obedience are inseparable in one's relation to God. If the patriarchal narrative says in one place that Abraham was justified because he believed God, in another place God confirms to Isaac the promise made to Abraham "because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws" (Gen. 26:5). He would not have obeyed the divine call had he not taken God at his word; his obedience was the outward evidence of his inward faith. So Philo: "impelled by an oracle calling him to leave his native land and family and paternal home, and move to another country, he made eager haste to do so, considering that speed in giving effect to the command was as good as its full accomplishment; in fact, it looked as though he were returning to his homeland from foreign parts and not leaving his homeland for foreign parts."76 Philo, after his fashion, interprets the story of Abraham's call and migration in a thoroughgoing allegorical manner, to denote the experiences "of a virtue-loving soul in its quest for the true God."77 But he gives all due prominence to the part of faith in Abraham's response to God; pointing out that in Gen. 12:1 God speaks to Abraham in the future tense of "the land that I will show you," he says: "This is a testimony to the faith which the soul placed in God, manifesting its gratitude not on the basis of accomplished facts but on the basis of expectation of things to come. For the soul, utterly dependent on good hope and considering those things which are not present to be indubitably present already because of the trustworthiness of him who has promised, has won as its guerdon that perfect blessing, faith; as it is said farther on: `Abraham believed God' [Gen. 15:6]."78
Our author points out that Abraham did not receive the promise of the inheritance at the time of his first call; the land to which he was directed to go was the "place which he was to receive as his inheritance"; the promise of the inheritance was not given until he had returned from Egypt and Lot had chosen the well-watered circuit of Jordan to settle in (Gen. 13:14-17); it was reaffirmed to him along with the promise of an heir (Gen. 15:18-21), and again after the bestowal of the covenant of circumcision (Gen. 17:8). The divine bidding was sufficient for him at his first call,79 and "he went forth, not knowing where he was going." The promise of the inheritance was not in the first instance an incentive to obedience; it was the reward of his obedience.
9 Even when he received the promise of the inheritance, it was the promise that he received, not the visible possession of the land; but to Abraham the promise of God was as substantial as its realization. He lived thereafter in the good of that promise. Year after year he pitched his moving tent amid the settled inhabitants of Palestine,80 "in them but not of them," commanding their respect as "a prirfce of God,"81 but owning not a square foot of the country until he bought the field of Machpelah near Hebron from Ephron the Hittite as a family burial-ground. Yet, living like a resident alien82 in the land which had been promised to him and his descendants, he did not grow impatient. Some visible tokens of the word of God he did indeed receive, in Isaac the promised child of his old age, and even in Isaac's son Jacob, through whom the line of promise was to run.83 But Isaac and Jacob in their turn did not live to see the fulfilment of the promise that the land would be theirs;84 they remained nomads like Abraham himself.
10 What was the secret of Abraham's patience? This, says our author: the commonwealth on which his hopes were fixed was no transient common wealth of this temporal order. He was looking for a city of a different kind: the city with the eternal foundations,85 planned and built by God.86 Just as the true rest of God is not the earthly Canaan into which the first Joshua led the people of Israel (Heb. 4:8), so Abraham kept his eyes fixed on the wellestablished city of God which was to be revealed in the time of fulfilment.
Here certainly our author may be said to allegorize-to discern in the promise to Abraham that the earthly Canaan would be his and his descendants' an underlying promise of a richer and eternal inheritance. With his statement that Abraham looked for "the city with firm foundations" (NEB) we may compare Philo's description of the land which God promised to give Abraham as "a city good and wide and very prosperous, for the gifts of God are very great."87 To Philo this city is the abode of the individual soul which spends its time in the contemplation of the universe and cultivation of the knowledge of God; it is the natural habitat of the true philosopher.88 To our author it is the heavenly Jerusalem,89 the commonwealth of God in the spiritual and eternal order, now effectively made accessible by the completion of Christ's high-priestly work, so that all the men and women of faith come to be enrolled there as free citizens. In Philo's treatment not only the promised land but Abraham himself is allegorized; our author is content to treat Abraham and all the others listed in this catalogue as real historical characters from whose experience later generations can learn. Nor was his insight at fault in discerning in the promise to Abraham something more abiding than the fairest earthly possession. To those who place their trust in him God gives possessions of real and incorruptible value. Since, in our Lord's words, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob "live to him" (Luke 20:38), their true heritage must be based in the being of God; if the New Testament writers are not misguided in portraying them as the ancestors of the family of faith, their essential blessings must be of the same order as the blessings enjoyed by their spiritual children under the new covenant.90 "The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory
11 According to the transmitted text, as commonly translated, we now have a statement about the faith of Sarah. There are difficulties in the way of the traditional interpretation, some of them less weighty and some of them more so.
(i) Sarah, it is said, is not a good example of faith.92 According to Gen. 18:12 she laughed when she overheard the divine promise that she would give birth to a son, and the comment of God on her laughter (Gen. 18:13f.) makes it plain that it was the laughter of incredulity. Chrysostom indeed, in dealing with this difficulty, suggests that her subsequent denial of her laughter was "by faith";93 but of course it was nothing of the kind: "Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid" (Gen. 18:15). Yet according to promise she gave birth to Isaac nevertheless.94 No doubt when Isaac was born she laughed in a manner that betokened no incredulity but exulting wonder: "God has made laughter for me; every one who hears will laugh over me" (Gen. 21:6).95 But our author speaks of an act of faith that preceded her conception of Isaac. Still, this is not an insuperable objection. Our author elsewhere in this chapter can see faith where most people would not, and there may be something in R. V. G. Tasker's comment:96 "It is surely just the paradoxical character of the illustration which is a sign of its genuineness; and kai ante ['even herself'] so far from making a poor connexion, as Zuntz asserts,97 may well give us the insight we need into the author's thought about Gen. xviii. Even Sarah's acceptance of a promise which at first she seemed to hear with indifference is to the mind of the auctor ad Hebraeos a venture into the unseen world which faith makes real."98
(ii) In v. 12 it is still Abraham's faith that is the subject, so that v. 11, if it refers to Sarah, is a digression. Even so, it would not be an irrelevant digression; Sarah was very much involved in the fulfilment of the promise that Abraham would have a son.
(iii) The Genesis narrative lays stress on the quality of Abraham's faith in accepting God's promise that he would have descendants when he was still childless. It is in this particular context that Abraham "believed Yahweh; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). Paul, following the Genesis narrative, emphasizes that "no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised" (Rom. 4:20f.). But on the usual reading of our present passage the author of Hebrews has nothing to say about this signal demonstration of Abraham's faith. If the language of v. 11 were unambiguous, we should simply have to accept this situation; but in fact the language of v. 11 points in another direction.
(iv) The one firm argument against taking v. 11 as a statement of Sarah's faith lies in the fact that the phrase traditionally rendered "to conceive seed" just does not mean that; it refers to the father's part in the genera tive process, not the mother's. A literal translation would be, "for the deposition of seed";99 it does not denote the receiving or conception of seed. This is a straightforward matter of the natural sense of a Greek word, and had it not been for the apparent presence of "Sarah" as subject of the sentence no one would ever have thought of finding a reference to conception here.100 Tasker describes this objection to the traditional interpretation as a "notorious difficulty"; but adds: "do we know enough about Greek usage at the time to say definitely that an active noun of this kind could not also carry a passive sense?"101 All that we know of the usage of this Greek noun at the time renders it in the highest degree improbable that it would be employed in the sense of "conception," especially by one so sensitive to Greek usage as our author is. But Tasker is certainly right in saying that the solution proposed by Zuntz and others "seems a too drastic cutting of the knot." They suggest that the words "Sarah herself' should be rejected as a very early addition to the text; the verse would then be rendered: "By faith he [Abraham] also received power to beget a child even after the natural season of But it is not necessary to cut out "Sarah herself' from the text. If the adjective "barren" belongs to the original text, "Sarah herself being barren" is best' taken as a circumstantial clause103 and "Abraham" remains the subject of "received power." If "barren" is regarded as a later addition to the text, then "Sarah herself' may be construed in the dative case instead of the nominative,104 and the verse then runs: "By faith he [Abraham] also, together with Sarah, received power to beget a child even after the natural season of life, because he reckoned the one who gave the promise to be trustworthy." In either case, v. 12 then follows on naturally.
12 Thus from this one man Abraham, when he was already "as good as dead" as far as the hope of founding a family was concerned, there sprang a host of descendants, in fulfilment of the divine promises that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gen. 15:5; 22:17) and "as the sand which is upon the seashore" (Gen. 22:17).105 The word rendered "as good as dead" is the same perfect passive participle as Paul uses in reference to the same subject when he says that Abraham, on receiving the promise of God, weighed up all the adverse circumstances and "did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body now as good as dead'06 (he being about a hundred years old), or the deadness of Sarah's womb" (Rom. 4:19), but concluded that the certainty of God's word far outweighed them all.107 "That is why," adds Paul, "it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Rom. 4:22);108 and our author is in full agreement. The point of v. 12, however, is all the more clearly made if Abraham is the subject of v. 11.
4. The City of God the Homeland of the Faithful (11:13-16)
13 All these died in faith: they had not received109 the promises, but they saw110 and greeted them from afar, acknowledging themselves to be aliens and pilgrims on earth.
14 For those who say such things show clearly that they are seeking111 a homeland.
15 If indeed the homeland they referred to112 was the one they had left, they would have had an opportunity to go back there.
16 But as it is, it is a better homeland that they long for-that is, a heavenly one. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
13 "These all"-more particularly, those mentioned in the five preceding verses, Abraham (with Sarah), Isaac, and Jacob-"died in faith,"113 as they had lived in faith. Their lives were regulated by the firm conviction that God would fulfil the promises he had given them, and in death they continued to look forward to the fulfilment of those promises, as is evident from the words in which Isaac and Jacob bestowed their final blessings on their sons or grandsons, as vv. 20 and 21 indicate. But more generally it is true of all the men and women of God in Old Testament days that they "died in faith: they had not received the promises, but they saw and greeted them from afar," as indeed our author affirms in v. 39, at the end of his honors list. It was Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, however, who lived preeminently as "aliens and pilgrims114 on earth" in a sense which is inapplicable to those Israelites of later generations after the settlement in Canaan. To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Canaan remained a "promised" land to the end of their days; their descendants saw the fulfilment of what was a promise to the patriarchs. But to the patriarchs that promise was sure because it was God's promise; and they staked everything on its certainty. In one sense, as our author has said earlier, Abraham, "having shown steadfastness, obtained the promise" (6:15)115-he obtained the promised son, not only by his birth but also by his restoration from death "as a type," as v. 19 puts it-but the full realization of the promises had to await the day of Christ. "I am a stranger and a sojournerl16 among you," said Abraham to the sons of Heth (Gen. 23:4); he recognized and accepted his status as a pilgrim. So too Jacob, in old age, speaks of the long course of his life as "the days of the years of my (Gen. 47:9).
14 When the patriarchs used language like this, says our author, they made it plain118 that the place of their sojourning was not their home.119 Their "pilgrim's progress" through this world had as its goal a home elsewhere. Canaan was no more their home as they sought the country of their hearts' desire than the wilderness was the home of their descendants in Moses' day who journeyed from Egypt to Canaan.
15 It is equally plain that, although they spoke of themselves as pilgrims in a foreign land, they did not refer to120 the land they had left as being their true home. In that case, they could easily have gone back there. But in fact they had no thought of doing so. 121 When Abraham's servant suggested to his master that Isaac might have to go to Mesopotamia in person to persuade his bride to come to Canaan, Abraham said: "See to it that you do not take my son back there" (Gen. 24:6). In the following generation Jacob had to flee to Mesopotamia from the anger of his brother Esau, but his vision at Bethel on the first night of his journey there made it impossible for him ever to think of Mesopotamia as his home; Canaan, to which his returning steps were directed twenty years later, was now the "land of his fathers" (Gen. 31:3), even if in it he had no settled abode.
16 The truth is, their true homeland was not on earth at all. The better country on which they had set their hearts was the heavenly country.122 The earthly Canaan and the earthly Jerusalem were but temporary object-lessons pointing to the saints' everlasting rest, the well-founded city of God. Those who put their trust in God receive a full reward, and that reward must belong not to this transient world-order but to the enduring order which participates in the life of God. The example of the patriarchs is intended to guide the readers of the epistle to a true sense of values; like the elect sojourners of the Dispersion addressed in 1 Peter they are to live in this world as "aliens and exiles"123 (1 Pet. 2:11), and like the Philippians to whom Paul wrote, their "citizenshipl24 is in heaven" (Phil. 3:20). This ideal has proved too high for many Christians throughout the centuries of our era; yet there has never failed a distinguished succession of men and women possessed of this pilgrim attitude who have sung with Henry Francis Lyte:
Yet those who have shared most truly the otherworldliness of the patriarchs have not been unpractical people, too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly use. Abraham's neighbors were enriched by the presence of this wandering stranger in their midst; when the territory of some of them was devastated by an invading army on one occasion, it was "Abram the Hebrew"125 who took immediate and effective action to deal with the situation.126 There have indeed been many occasions when practical men of the world have been thankful to saints and mystics for timely help in an emergency beyond their own power to cope with.
"Those who honor me I will honor," says God (1 Sam. 2:30). The patriarchs honored God by putting their faith in him; he honored them by calling himself "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Ex. 3:6).127 What higher honor than this could be paid to any mortal? These three patriarchs were not faultless, but God is not ashamed to be called their God, because they took him at his word. It is noteworthy that, while Jacob is in many ways the least exemplary of the three, God is called the God of Jacob much more frequently in the Bible than he is called the God of Abraham or of Isaac. For all his shortcomings, Jacob had a true sense of spiritual values which sprang from his faith in God.128 For these, then, and for all who tread the same path of faith, God has prepared his city, his commonwealth. 129 There is, of course, no difference between the heavenly country13o and the city of God. Words could hardly make it clearer that the patriarchs and the other men and women of God who lived before Christ have a share in the same inheritance of glory as is promised to believers in Christ of New Testament times.131
5. More about the Faith of the Patriarchs (11:17-22)
17 By faith Abraham offered upIsaac132 when he was put to the test: Yes, the one who had received133 the promises was on the point of offering up134 his only son,135
18 the son concerning whom it had been said, "In Isaac your offspring will be called. "136
19 He reckoned that God was able to raise people up137 even from the dead, and it was from the dead that he received Isaac back as a type.
20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even138 in respect of things to come.
22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, mentioned the departurel40 of the people of Israel and gave directions with regard to his bones.
17-18 The "Binding of Isaac,"141 as the story of Gen. 22 has traditionally been called among the Jews, is treated in Jewish interpretation as the classic example of the redemptive efficacy of martyrdom.142 Its influence is probably to be traced in several New Testament passages,143 but only in two places is the story expressly referred to-here and in Jas. 2:21-23-and in both of these places it is set forth as an example of faith, faith manifested in action. "Was not Abraham our father justified by works," asks James, "when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, `Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness';144 and he was called the friend of God."145 James's emphasis is in line with his general argument in that context; but he is in essential agreement with our author: Abraham's offering up of Isaac was a signal demonstration of his faith. Not only so, but this interpretation is consistent with the original narrative, in which God's command to Abraham to offer up Isaac was intended to "test" him (Gen. 22:1),146 and Abraham's ready obedience attested the unreserved quality of his allegiance to God. "When he was tested he was found faithful," says Ben Sira, plainly in reference to this incident (Sir. 44:20), while the author of Wisdom says that it was wisdom that "kept him strong in the face of his compassion for his child" (Wisdom 10:5).147 In 4 Maccabees the mother of the seven martyrs appeals to this example when pleading with her sons to preserve their faithfulness to God in face of deadly threats; it was for God's sake, she says, that "our father Abraham hastened to sacrifice his son Isaac, the ancestor of our nation, and was not overcome by fear at the sight of his own paternal hand descending on him with the knife" (16:20; cf. also 18:11).
What our author emphasizes, however, is Abraham's indomitable faith in the promises of God. God promised Abraham, long after the hope of progeny had receded for himself and Sarah, that he would have a numerous posterity, and at last the long-awaited son was born-the son on whose survival the fulfilment of God's promises to Abraham depended. In this regard Ishmael and any other sons of Abraham did not count, for the word of God was quite specific: "Through the line of Isaac your posterity shall be traced" (NEB). Isaac was unique and irreplaceable-this is the point of the epithet rendered "only begotten"; he was, in God's own words to Abraham, "your only son, whom you love, even Isaac" (Gen. 22:2).148 And it was Isaac who had to be sacrificed! The ethical problem which the story presents to twentieth-century readers149 is not the problem on which our author concentrates. The problem to which he invites his readers' attention is this: The fulfilment of God's promises depended on Isaac's survival; if Isaac was to die, how could these promises be fulfilled? And yet Abraham had no doubt that the one who had given the promises required the sacrifice of Isaac. What was he to do? It was Abraham's problem; apart from the dictates of natural affection, how could the promise of God and the command of God be reconciled? Later writers, reflecting on the incident, make much of the turmoil in Abraham's heart, although the biblical narrative has little enough to say on this score. Indeed, the impression which we get from the biblical narrative is that Abraham treated it as God's problem; it was for God, and not for Abraham, to reconcile his promise and his command. So, when the command was given, Abraham promptly set about obeying it; his own duty was clear, and God could safely be trusted to discharge his responsibility in the matter.
19 Our author's statement that Abraham believed in God's ability to raise the dead150 is not a gratuitous reading into the narrative of something which is not there. When Abraham left his servants behind while he and Isaac went to the place of sacrifice, he said to them: "The boy and I will go on there and worship, and we will come back to you" (Gen. 22:5). The plain meaning of the text is that Abraham expected to come back with Isaac. But how could he come back with Isaac if Isaac was to be offered up as a burnt offering? Only if Isaac was to be raised from the dead after being sacrificed. Abraham reckoned, says our author, that since the fulfilment of the promises depended on Isaac's survival, God was bound (as he certainly was able) to restore Isaac's life if his life had to be taken. And in fact, as far as Abraham's resolution was concerned, Isaac was as good as dead, and it was practically from the dead that he received him back when his hand was arrested in midair and the heavenly voice forbade him to proceed further. He received him back from the dead, says our author, "as a type"151-meaning, probably, in a manner which prefigured the resurrection of Christ. Is it this incident which is referred to in the words of Christ in John 8:56: "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it, and was glad"?152
20 In some strands of Jewish interpretation the attitude of Isaac himself, in submitting to being bound by his father with a view to his sacrifice, is commended as an example of obedience, not only to his father but to God.153 On this our author says nothing; the one incident from Isaac's career which he mentions as a token of his faith is his blessing of Jacob and Esau154-their names are given in this order and not in the order of seniority, perhaps because this was the order in which they received their father's blessing. Nothing is said about the deception practiced on Isaac, in consequence of which the blessing which he had intended for Esau was bestowed on Jacob. The line of promise ran through Isaac, and as Isaac himself had received from God a reaffirmation of the promised blessings after Abraham's death,155 so he determined to transmit those blessings to the following generation. When he learned that Jacob had received the blessing intended for Esau, he made no attempt to revoke it; rather he confirmed it: "yes, and he shall be blessed" (Gen. 27:33). Yet he did reserve a blessing for Esau, and although it was not the blessing bound up with the promise, yet it was a blessing concerning "things to come," as truly as Jacob's blessing was. Isaac, like his father, believed God, and his faith too was an "assurance of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen."
21 Jacob in his turn demonstrated similar faith. Isaac was misled by the plotting of his wife and younger son into giving the younger son the blessing which he had designed for the elder; but when Jacob on his deathbed blessed the two sons of Joseph he deliberately bestowed the greater blessing on Ephraim, the younger son.156 But he blessed both of them concerning "things to come," as he himself had been blessed by Isaac; and thus, while his earlier career had been marked by anything but faith, as he endeavored repeatedly by his own scheming to gain advantages for himself, yet at the end of his days he recognized the futility of all his scheming, and relied on the faithfulness of the "Mighty One of Jacob."
The statement that he "worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff," is based on the Septuagint version of Gen. 47:31.157 The Masoretic text says that "Israel bowed himself on the bed's head";158 but the Septuagint translators read Hebrew mittah, "bed," as though it were matteh, "staff."159 The picture of the patriarch sitting on his bed and leaning on his staff is convincing enough; the same cannot be said for the mistranslation in the Latin New Testament, which makes him worship the top of his staff-a form of words from which some curious inferences have been drawn.160
22 Joseph also, at the end of his days, showed the same firm faith in the fulfilment of God's promises. Joseph's career certainly presents instances of faith in abundance, such as his steadfastness under temptation and his patience under unjust treatment:
He endured his trials nobly and triumphed over them, for (as Stephen puts it) "God was with him, and rescued him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and over all his house" (Acts 7:9f.). Other writers enlarge on his righteousness, his fortitude, and his wisdom;162 but the one incident singled out by our author to illustrate his faith belongs to the end of his life, because, above everything else recorded of him, it expresses his conviction regarding "things to come." "I am about to die," he said to his kinsmen, "but God will visit you, and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob ... and you shall carry up my bones from here" (Gen. 50:24f.). Joseph had spent the whole of his long life, apart from the first seventeen years, in Egypt; but Egypt was not his home. Even when the rest of his family came down to Egypt at his invitation, he knew that their residence there would be but temporary. Just as his father Jacob had insisted on being carried back to the promised land for burial, so Joseph made his relatives swear that they would perform the like service for him. He "mentioned the departure [lit. the exodus] of the people of Israel," says our author, "and gave directions with regard to his bones." And in due course the coffin which contained his embalmed body was carried from Egypt when the Israelites left that land under the guidance of Moses, and was buried at Shechem after the settlement in Canaan.163 After a study of the motif of the bones of Joseph in Jewish literature M. Wilcox concludes that our author's reference to it "fits at once with the picture found elsewhere in Jewish exegesis of the piety and faithfulness of Joseph, and of the view that the visitation of which he spoke referred not only to Moses and the exodus but also to the final liberation of Israel at the hand of the Second Redeemer."164
6. The Faith of Moses (11:23-28)
24 By faith Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter:
25 he chose the endurance of hardship with the people of God in preference to the temporary enjoyment of sin.
26 He reckoned the stigma attaching to the Messiah to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he kept his eyes fixed on the reward.
27 By faith he abandoned Egypt, and not because he was afraid of the king's anger, for he persevered because he saw the Invisible One.
28 By faith he has instituted166 the Passover, with the sprinkling of the blood, to prevent the destroyer of the firstborn from touching them.167
23 The next example of faith is Moses, whose whole life is marked by awareness of the presence and power of the unseen God, and believing obedience to his word. In Jewish legend the achievements of Moses were magnified far beyond the biblical account.168 A more sober summary of his career is given in Stephen's speech (Acts 7:20-44). Stephen mentions that "Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds" (Acts 7:22); but he lays chief emphasis on the fact that Moses was God's appointed messenger and redeemer to the people of Israel, the man who "led them out, having performed wonders and signs169 in Egypt and at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years" (Acts 7:36). Our author's assessment of Moses is closely akin to Stephen's. He has already spoken of his faithfulness as a servant in God's house (Heb. 3:2, 5); here he singles out those features from the history of Moses which best illustrate his present theme of faith in God.
The faith which was shown at Moses' birth was, of course, not his own but his parents'.170 He was born in Egypt, soon after the reigning Pharaoh, to restrict the rapidly increasing numbers of Israelites in his realm, had issued a decree ordering that all male childrn born to them should be put to death at birth. But, according to the Exodus narrative, when Moses' mother "saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months" (Ex. 2:2), and after that she placed him in a basket of bulrushes on the brink of the Nile, where he was found by Pharaoh's daughter. While the Hebrew text makes his mother the active party in thus circumventing the royal decree, the Septuagint says that both his parents hid him for three months,171 and it is the Septuagint account that is followed by our author, as also by Philo172 and Josephus.173 Nature itself might suggest that his mother took the initiative, with the acquiescence of his father. Had their defiance of the law been discovered, the penalty would have been severe; but "they were not deterred by the king's decree."
Wherein precisely did their "faith" lie? Probably the statement that Moses was a "goodly"174 child means more than that he was a beautiful baby. We are perhaps intended to infer that there was something about the appearance of the child which indicated that he was no ordinary child,175 but one destined under God to accomplish great things for his people. Our author does not repeat the story of the divine revelation to this effect which, according to Josephus,176 was given in a night vision to Moses' father Amram; but some appreciation of the divine purpose to be fulfilled through Moses is implied in his ascription of faith to Amram and Jochebed.
24 When Pharaoh's daughter found the infant Moses by the Nile, she adopted him and brought him up as her own son. But "when Moses had grown up,177 ... he went out to his people, and looked on their burdens" (Ex. 2:11). Stephen makes him "about forty years old" at the time, thus dividing his life of 120 years into three clearly demarcated periods of forty years each. According to Stephen, Moses presented himself to his fellow-Israelites as their champion, supposing that they "understood that God was giving them deliverance by his hand, but they did not understand" (Acts 7:25). Our author reads the Exodus narrative as Stephen did, and concludes that, by thus identifying himself with the downtrodden Israelites, Moses renounced the status which he enjoyed in Egypt as a member of the royal household. He could not identify himself both with the Israelites and with the Egyptians; he had to choose the one or the other. To choose the side of a slave-nation, with all the contempt and privation which that entailed, in preference to the substantial advantages and prospects which were his as "the son of Pharaoh's daugh ter,"178 must have seemed an act of folly by all worldly standards. It is, however, an act which has been repeatedly reproduced in our day by outstanding members of subject nations who have stood well with the imperial power, but have preferred to cast in their lot with their own people even if this involved them in loss, discomfort, and imprisonment.
25 It was "by faith" that Moses made his great refusal, with all that it cost him in material terms. His people were being ill-treated, but he chose to share their ill-treatment179 "rather than enjoy the transient pleasures of sin"180 (NEB). The privileges and advantages which are attached to high rank and political power are not sinful in themselves; they can indeed be used very effectively to promote the well-being of others and to help the underprivileged. Moses might have argued to himself that he could do much more for the Israelites by remaining in Pharaoh's court and using his influence there on their behalf than by renouncing his Egyptian citizenship and becoming a member of a depressed group with no political rights. But for Moses to do this, when once he had seen the path of duty clear before him, would have been sin-the crowning sin of apostasy, against which the recipients of this letter needed so insistently to be warned. Even if (as some have imagined) the crown of Egypt was within Moses' reach had he remained where he was,181 and his name had been perpetuated in history as the greatest and wisest of the rulers of that land, he would never have attained such a reputation as he did by making the great refusal. But when Moses made that refusal he did not foresee the reputation which he was going to establish for himself; he had nothing to look forward to but privation, danger, scorn, and suffering-with Israel's liberation, please God. To have remained at Pharaoh's court would have been lasting dishonor, and that dishonor would be a price too high to pay for material advantages which at best would be but short-lived.
26 Moses weighed the issues in his mind, and decided that the temporal wealth of Egypt was far less valuable than "the stigma that rests on God's Anointed"182 (NEB). What others would have considered as something to be shunned at all costs he esteemed as a prize to be eagerly sought. Like Paul after him, whatever gain he had, he counted as loss for Christ's sake.183 The identification of Christ with his people is noteworthy. The words which the God of Israel put in Moses' mouth when he went to Pharaoh to demand his people's release, "Israel is my son, my firstborn" (Ex. 4:22), are as applicable to Jesus personally as they are to Israel corporately. The Messiah is one with the messianic people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh.184 "In all their affliction he was afflicted" (Isa. 63:9), and in the fulness of time he too, like his people before him, was called out of Egypt185 and had his Exodus to accomplish.186 The "stigma" and disrepute which the people of God bore were borne in concentrated form by the Lord's Anointed; to him the New Testament applies the psalmist's cry to God: "the insults of those who insulted thee have fallen on me" (Ps. 69:9).187 The national his tory of Israel, which began under Moses' leadership, led on to Christ; by his obedience to the heavenly vision Moses, like Abraham at an earlier date, looked forward to the day of Christ.
To readers whose perseverance was in danger of faltering because of the stigma attached to the name of Christ188 the example of Moses was calculated to be a challenge and encouragement. It would help them to fix their eyes on the reward189 held out to faith if they remembered how Moses weighed the issues of time in the balances of eternity: "his eyes were fixedl90 upon the coming day of recompense" (NEB). To have such a secure place in the history of redemption might have been reckoned reward enough; but to our author's mind Moses, as truly as the patriarchs, looked for his perfect recompense in the well-founded city of God.
27 With this forward-looking faith Moses abandoned'91 Egypt. His heart-renunciation of Egypt, with all that Egypt had to offer him, was the essential act of faith; but our author probably thinks of the occasion when he left Egypt to live in the wilderness of Midian,192 a stranger in a strange land.193 A difficulty may be felt here, since the Exodus narrative tells how Moses was afraid when he realized that his killing of the Egyptian whom he saw ill-treating a Hebrew was public knowledge. "Moses was afraid, and thought, `Surely the thing is known.' When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh, and stayed in the land of Midian" (Ex. 2:14f.).194 Our author, who follows the biblical record so closely, cer tainly does not intend to contradict it, but rather to interpret it. "The fear of Moses is not immediately connected with his flight in the Hebrew story, so that the author may have felt warranted by this in denying that the flight was due to fear."195 He was afraid, admittedly, but that was not why he left Egypt; his leaving Egypt was an act of faith. "By faith he left Egypt, and not because he feared the king's anger" (NEB). By his impulsive act of violence he had burned his boats as far as the court of Egypt was concerned; but he might have raised a slaves' revolt there and then. By faith, however, he did nothing of the kind; "he had the insight to see that God's hour had not yet struck, and therefore he resolutely turned his back on the course he had begun to tread, and retraced his steps till he entered on the harder way. For it was harder to live for his people than it was to die for them."196
Some commentators, however, have preferred to see here a reference to Moses' departure from Egypt at the time of the Exodus.197 One argument in favor of this view is the statement that "he persevered because he saw the Invisible One," which might be understood as an allusion to his experience at the burning bush.198 Against it, however, is the consideration that a reference to the Exodus here, before the institution of the Passover in v. 28, would be out of its natural order, as well as the consideration that fear of the king's wrath'99 would be irrelevant to this later departure from Egypt, since the king and his people alike then urged Moses and the Israelites to get out as quickly as they could.200 As for Moses' endurance, "seeing the Invisible One,"201 this need not be taken as a specific allusion to the burning bush, but to the fact that Moses paid more attention to the invisible King of kings than to the king of Egypt. If faith is "a conviction regarding things not seen," it is first and foremost a conviction regarding the unseen God, as has been emphasized already in the affirmation that he who comes to God must believe that he is (v. 6). Our author probably means that Moses' lifelong vision of God was the secret of his faith and perseverance. 202 Philo describes Moses as the "beholder of that world of nature which cannot be seen,"203 by contrast with Pharaoh, who "did not acknowledge any deity that could be discerned by the mind alone, or any apart from those that could be seen."204 Here again there is a suggestion to the readers of the epistle that the invisible order is the real and permanent one, and not such a visible but transient establishment as Judaism enjoyed in the temple order up to A.D. 70.
28 It was by faith, too, that Moses instituted the Passover in accordance with the divine command. The Passover became a perpetual memorial205 for Israel of the last night that their forefathers spent in Egypt, when the angel of death206 passed through the land destroying the firstborn in every home, apart from those whose doorways were marked by the blood of the paschal lamb, for at the threshold of those dwellings the God of Israel himself stood guard and prevented the destroyer from entering.207 Elsewhere in the New Testament Jesus is presented as the antitype of the paschal lamb;208 if our author does not press this correspondence, it may be that he did not wish to detract from the correspondence between the death of Jesus and the annual sacrifice on the Day of Atonement.
7. Faith at the Exodus and Settlement (11:29-31)
29 By faith they crossed over the Red Sea as though it were dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do the same209 they were swallowed up.210
30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after the people had marched around them for seven days.
31 By faith Rahab the harlot211 did not perish with those who were disobedient,212 because she received the spies hospitably.213
29 The crossing of the Red Sea-the "Sea of Reeds,"214 as the Hebrew has it-was the immediate sequel to the keeping of the Passover. It might well have been cited as a further instance of Moses' faith, but here "all those who came out of Egypt under Moses' leadership" (3:16) are associated with him in this act of faith. Nevertheless it was Moses' faith that inspired them to move forward into the sea; they were full of fear and complaint as they saw the water before them and the pursuing Egyptian army overtaking them from the rear, until at Moses' command they advanced and saw "the salvation of Yahweh" (Ex. 14:13). For the Sea of Reeds receded in front of them by reason of the strong east wind which blew all that night,215 and they were able to walk across as on dry land.216 But the pursuing Egyptians were but halfway across when the sea returned to its usual place and overwhelmed them. This great victory which Yah weh won for his people was celebrated in the "Song of the Sea" preserved in Ex. 15:1ff., and commemorated elsewhere in terms of the primeval cosmic triumph of the Creator over the forces of chaos.217 It supplied a pictorial form of language for describing later deliverances, like the release from the Babylonian exile;218 and it is used in the New Testament as a type of Christian baptism.219 But our author is concerned with it for its bearing on the theme of faith. Why did the sea recede before the Israelites so that they passed over dry-shod? At one level it was an act of God;220 at another level it could be ascribed to the east wind; but our author ascribes it to the Israelites' faith. It was nonetheless an act of God, who used the east wind to accomplish his saving purpose, but it was by faith that they appropriated the deliverance thus procured for them. And why were the Egyptians drowned when they tried in their turn to cross the sea? At one level this also was an act of God;221 at another level it could be ascribed to the abating of the east wind, coupled with the sinking of their chariots in the mud;222 but our author implies that they came to grief because they had no faith.
The Israelites' faith on this occasion consisted in their willingness to go forward at God's word,223 although it seemed impossible to get across the sea. Moses assured them that their God would act on their behalf, and although they could not see how he would do so, they obeyed. But no further act of faith is recorded here throughout the wilderness wanderings. These forty years have already been described in the epistle as a period of unbelief, throughout which God was displeased with that generation.224 Reference might have been made to Caleb and Joshua's encouraging minority report when they came back from surveying the promised land (Num. 13:30; 14:38); but our author is not attempting to exhaust the biblical examples of faith. Even of Moses' patience throughout those years nothing is said, although indeed the words "he persevered because he saw the Invisible One" (v. 27) belong to this final phase of his life at least as much as to the earlier phases.225 But the closing obituary testimony of the Pentateuch, "there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face" (Deut. 34:10), would have been regarded by our author as no longer valid, now that a greater than Moses had come and established a better covenant than that of Moses' day.
30 The record of faith, then, is suspended for forty years and resumed with the entry into Canaan. By whose faith did the walls of Jericho fall down? Primarily by Joshua's; he believed and obeyed the divine instructions given him when he saw the angel "commander of Yahweh's army" (Josh. 5:14). But the people's faith was involved as well, for they carried out faithfully the instructions which Joshua communicated to them, until the city fell. But they could not see how it would fall; on the face of it, nothing could seem more foolish than for grown men to march around a strong fortress for seven days on end, led by seven priests blowing rams' horns. Who ever heard of a fortress being captured that way?226 Nevertheless, when they marched around the city seven times on the seventh day and heard the last blast on the rams' horns, they "raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city" (Josh. 6:20).
Archaeology can throw much light on the collapse of ancient citiesalthough in the case of Late Bronze Age Jericho it has thrown much less light than might have been hoped, less indeed than was at one time believed.227 But the forces which operate in the unseen realm, such as the power of faith, cannot be dug up by the excavator's spade. We may now never discover in material terms what made the walls of Jericho fall, whether earthquake or subsidence or something else, but our author ascribes their fall to the power of that faith which found expression in Joshua's submissive reply to the divine messenger: "What does my lord bid his servant?" (Josh. 5:14). It is by this same faith that other Jerichoes, both large and small, can still be overthrown. "The weapons we wield," says Paul, "are not merely human, but divinely potent to demolish strongholds; we demolish sophistries and all that rears its proud head against the knowledge of God; we compel every human thought to surrender in obedience to Christ" (2 Cor. 10:4f., NEB).
31 The next example of faith is the most surprising that we have met thus far-Rahab, the harlot228 of Jericho. Yet this is not the only place in the New Testament where she receives honorable mention for her faith: in Jas. 2:25 her kindly treatment of Joshua's spies is one of two arguments for the thesis that faith without works is dead, the other argument being Abraham's offering up of Isaac. In fact Rahab, despite her antecedents, enjoys a place of esteem in Jewish and Christian records. The two scouts whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho found a night's lodging in Rahab's house, and when the authorities discovered where they were, she concealed them and then helped them to escape, stipulating only that her life should be saved when Jericho fell into their hands. For, as she told them, the news of the Exodus and of Israel's victories in Transjordan had already reached Jericho and caused great alarm and despondency there; "for Yahweh your God is he who is God in heaven above and on earth beneath" (Josh. 2:11). Jericho's fall was therefore a foregone conclusion. They promised to protect her, and so, when Jericho was taken, she and the members of her household were saved from the massacre when the city was "devoted" to Israel's God, and incorporated in the commonwealth of Israel (Josh. 6:25). It was self-evidently her faith in the God of Israel that moved her to behave as she did, and led to her preservation. Indeed, she is probably mentioned in yet another place in the New Testament, for (in spite of a difference of spelling)229 there can be little doubt that she is the Rahab who appears in Matt. 1:5 as the wife of Salmon, prince of Judah, the mother of Boaz, the ancestress of King David and therefore also of our Lord.230 The earliest Christian writer outside the New Testament canon, Clement of Rome, recounts the story of Rahab to illustrate the virtues of faith and hospitality, and makes her a prophetess to boot, since the scarlet rope by which she let the spies down from her window on the city wall,231 and by which her house was identified at the capture of the city, foreshowed "that through the blood of the Lord all who trust and hope in God shall have redemption" (1 Clem. 12:7).232
8. Further Examples of Faith (11:32-38)
32 And what shall! say further? Time will fail me if I te11233 about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel and the234 prophets.
33 Through faith they conquered kingdoms,235 established justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions,
34 quenched the force of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, had their weakness turned to strength,236 proved mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.
35 Women237 received their dead children back by resurrection. Others were tortured to death,238 refusing to accept deliverance, in order to attain a better resurrection.
36 Others had to experience mocking and scourging, and chains and imprisonment too.
37 They were stoned, sawn in two,239 killed by the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.
38 The world was not worthy of such people, as they wandered in240 deserts and on mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
32 The comparative detail in which examples of faith have been adduced from the earlier period of Old Testament history now gives place to a more summary account covering the later period. With a rhetorical transition241 our author goes on, first of all, to mention six men by name spanning the interval between the settlement in Canaan and the early monarchy. The six names are not given in strict chronological order (or the order in which they appear in the biblical narrative); in fact, if we arrange them in three pairs, the two men in each pair are named here in the reverse order to that of their Old Testament appearance, for in the Old Testament Barak appears before Gideon, Jephthah before Samson, and Samuel before David. The reversal of the order of Samuel and David may be intended to bring Samuel into closer contact with "the prophets" who are mentioned immediately after, Samuel being the first in the continuous "prophetic succession" of the age of the Hebrew monarchy.242 The four figures from the book of Judges who here precede "David and Samuel" remind us of the four who are listed in 1 Sam. 12:11, where Samuel, in a speech to the people after they have chosen Saul to be their king, recalls how in their earlier times of distress "Yahweh sent Jerubbaal and Bedan, and Jephthah and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side." Jerubbaal is another name for Gideon, and if Bedan is a corruption of Barak (as the Septuagint and Peshitta versions indicate), then Gideon and Barak appear in the same order as here. (The inclusion of Samuel in this way alongside the others may seem strange, since Samuel is the speaker; but it is not unparalleled: in the twentieth century General de Gaulle referred to himself in the third person when speaking historically. It is interesting, however, that for "Samuel" in 1 Sam. 12:11 the Syriac Peshitta reads "Samson.")243 On three out of these four-Gideon (Judg. 6:34), Jephthah (Judg. 11:29), and Samson (Judg. 13:25, etc.)-the Spirit of Yahweh is said to have come, and this could be taken as conclusive evidence of their faith.
Gideon was Israel's champion against the bedouin Midianites; his small force of three hundred men, equipped with torches in earthenware jars, and trumpets, threw the host of Midian into panic and won a signal victory.244 Barak was commander of the army of the tribes of Israel who united against Sisera, commander of the confederate Canaanite chariot-force, and defeated him and his followers "at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo" (Judg. 5:19). It is surprising to find Barak mentioned here as an example of faith rather than the prophetess Deborah, not to mention Jael, "the wife of Heber the Kenite, blessed ... above women in the tent" (Judg. 5:24). For Barak refused to take the field against Sisera when Deborah commanded him, in Yahweh's name, to do so, unless she went with him.245 Yet his very refusal may have been, in its way, a token of faith; his insistence on having Deborah with him was perhaps an expression of his faith in the God whose servant and spokeswoman Deborah was. And when he was told by her that the expedition which he was undertaking would not be for his own honor, he led it nonetheless; it was not his own honor, but the triumph of Yahweh and his people, that he sought.
Samson, who championed Israel's cause against the Philistines in his own single-handed way, may strike one as an odd choice among illustrations of faith; yet the narrative of Judges portrays him as one who was deeply conscious of the invisible God, and of his own call to be an instrument in God's hand against the enemy.246 And what of Jephthah, commander of the Transjordanian tribes against the Ammonites? Posterity remembers him chiefly for his rash vow; yet, rash as it was, it was a token of his sincere though uninstructed devotion to the God of Israel. The message which he sent to the king of Ammon (Judg. 11:14-27), with its historical retrospect reaching back to the Exodus and wilderness wanderings, expresses his appreciation of Yahweh's guidance of his people in those early days and his confidence that Yahweh will judge their cause today.
David is the only king to be mentioned by name; his record displays faults enough, but it also displays a humble readiness to repent and seek pardon from God, and a conviction of God's providence and faithfulness. 247 He made an earnest endeavor to put into practice the ideal of kingship portrayed in the poem which has come down to us with the title "The last words of David":
Like Abraham and others before him, he too received promises from God, promises regarding his house "for a great while to come" (2 Sam. 7:19), "the sure mercies of David" which found their fruition, as did the promises to Abraham, with the coming of Christ.248
None can question Samuel's fitness for inclusion here.
Samuel's name is well worthy to stand alongside those of Moses, Joshua, and David in the annals of Israel. He manifested the prophetic gift in his youth, and when the central sanctuary at Shiloh was destroyed by the Philistines, and the ark of the covenant, the palladium of Israel's nationhood, taken into captivity, it was he who proved equal to the task of rallying the shattered morale of his people. He showed them that God was still in their midst, even if the ark was in the hands of the Philistines; and indeed, when the ark was restored, he left it in an obscure place, lest the people's faith should once more be reposed in it instead of God. He went annually in circuit as judge in Israel, and undertook priestly duties as the nation's representative with widespread acceptance. The central sanctuary was no more, but one man, under God, served as the focus of national life. He recalled Israel to its covenant loyalty, and thanks to his inspiring leadership they defeated the Philistines on the very field of their earlier disaster.249 Not without cause has Samuel been described as "God's emergency man."250
It is in the time of Samuel that we first meet prophetic guilds,251 and from then on to postexilic days the Old Testament narrative presents us with a sequence of prophets who not only spoke but acted for God-Elijah and Elisha, Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and others who, not expressly named by our author, were certainly in his mind as he penned these words.
33 The exploits of these warriors and messengers of God are listed in general terms. The subduing of kingdoms, beginning with the overthrow of Sihon and Og in Transjordan, goes on through the period of Joshua and the judges, and reaches its climax in the reign of David, whose empire stretched from the Egyptian frontier to the Euphrates.252 Those rulers of Israel also established righteousness within the areas they controlled, in the spirit of that ancient "coronation oath" preserved to us as Ps. 101. This they did through faith253 in God, whose own throne is founded on "righteousness and justice" (Ps. 97:2). They "obtained promises"254 that God would be with them as they served his cause in faith, and obtained the fulfilment of his promises in the event; the promises made to David, as we have seen, had regard not only to his personal fortune but to the destiny awaiting his house. It was of these latter promises that Paul spoke in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch when, after telling how God raised up David to be Israel's king, he continued: "Of this man's posterity God has brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus, as he promised" (Acts 13:23).
34 Those who "quenched the force of fire" were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to fall down and worship Nebuchadnezzar's great golden image. They knew that their God was able to deliver them from the furnace, but they had no means of knowing whether he would in fact deliver them or not-"but if not," said they, "be it known to you, 0 king, that we will not serve your gods, or worship the golden image which you have set up" (Dan. 3:18).256 Had they received a special revelation that their lives would be preserved, it would have called for considerable faith to act upon it in face of the burning fiery furnace; but to behave as they did without any revelation of the kind called for much greater faith. The people to whom this epistle was sent might well have a fiery ordeal257 to face in the near future, but whether life or death was their portion they could be sure of divine companionship in the midst of it such as the three Hebrews enjoyed.
We can think of several prophets and others who "escaped the edge of the sword": Elijah was delivered from Jezebel,258 Elisha from her son Jehoram,259 Jeremiah from Jehoiakim.260 (But not all were delivered, as v. 37 reminds us.)
It could be said of many of the judges and prophets that they "won strength out of weakness" (RSV). Gideon was least in his father's house, by his own account, and his family was the poorest in Manasseh;261 yet Gideon and his three hundred were used by God to accomplish a great deliverance. The earliest comment on these words is provided by Clement of Rome. Clement was well acquainted with the Epistle to the Hebrews; in particular, he had studied this chapter and attempted to identify some of the heroes of faith who are here referred to anonymously. On the words "had their weakness turned to strength" he comments: "Many women have been made strong262 through the grace of God and have accomplished many deeds of valor" (1 Clem. 55:3). He goes on to instance Judith and Esther 263 What he says of Judith suggests that he thought of her as one in whom the remaining words of this verse came true: "became mighty in war, and put foreign armies to flight" (RSV).264 "The blessed Judith," he says, "when her city was besieged, asked the elders to let her go out into the camp of the aliens.265 So, exposing herself to danger, she went out for love of her country and people when they were being besieged, and the Lord delivered Holofernes into the hand of a woman" (1 Clem. 55:4f.). But what was true of Judith in literature was equally true of many Israelites in history, from the days of Joshua and the judges down to the war of independence led by Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers; they and their followers had their "weakness ... turned to strength, they grew powerful in war, they put foreign armies to rout" (NEB). They knew, in the words of Jonathan, that "nothing can hinder Yahweh from saving by many or by few" (1 Sam. 14:6); they believed that the battle was not theirs but God's,266 and therefore one of them chased a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight.267
35 The women who "received their dead children back by resurrection" were the poor widow of Zarephath and the wealthy woman of Shunem; the son of the former was restored to her by Elijah, the son of the latter by Elisha.268 In the former instance the faith was Elijah's rather than the woman's; when her son died, she could only think that the prophet was a visitant of judgment to her house, bringing nemesis in this form for her sin. But Elijah's prayer of faith, "0 Yahweh my God, let this child's soul come into him again" (1 Kings 17:21), was heard and the boy was restored to his mother. The woman of Shunem was an Israelite (not a foreigner, like the widow of Zarephath), and when her little son died, she showed what spirit she was of by hasting to Mount Carmel to lay her plaint before the man of God. Elisha matched her faith with his own, and by prayer and appropriate action he brought the child back to life. Both these incidents are described as resurrections;269 nowadays we sometimes distinguish between the resuscitation of a body to mortal life and the resurrection of the dead to life immortal; but no such distinction is made in the biblical vocabulary. The distinction is nevertheless real, though not verbal; our author goes on to speak of some who sought a "better resurrection"270 than that experienced by the two boys just mentioned, this "better resurrection" being a rising to the life of the age to come.
"Others were tortured to death," he says, "refusing to accept deliverance,271 in order to attain a better resurrection." The particular form of torture indicated by the Greek verb is being stretched on a frame and beaten to death.272 This was precisely the punishment meted out to Eleazar, one of the noble confessors of Maccabaean days, who willingly accepted death rather than forswear his loyalty to God.273 In 2 Maccabees the story of his martyrdom is followed by the record of the mother and her seven sons who endured this and other forms of torture sooner than transgress the law of God.274 In this story one brother after another declares his readiness to accept torture and death because of the hope of resurrection. One says to the king: "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws" (2 Macc. 7:9). Another holds out his limbs to be mutilated, saying: "I got these from heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again" (2 Macc. 7:11). And yet another at the point of death says: "One cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!" (2 Macc. 7:14). The resurrection to which they looked forward was "better" than that to which the boys of Zarephath and Shunem had been raised by Elijah and Elisha. Those boys were restored to mortal life, and in due course died; the resurrection for which the Maccabaean martyrs hoped was a resurrection to endless life. They could have avoided torture and death and accepted "deliverance" had they been prepared to compromise with the idolatrous requirements of Antiochus Epiphanes and his officers, but they knew that, if they did so, resurrection to life could never be theirs. They remained faithful unto death, and have been honored ever since by all who set loyalty to God above all else. In the Christian calendar the first day of August is marked as the festival of the "martyrdom of the holy Maccabees"; the Kontakion in the Horologion or office book of the Greek Church calls them the "greatest martyrs before the martyrs."275
The Old Testament has but little to say about the future life. Long life in the land which Yahweh their God had given them bulked more largely in the eyes of pious Israelites throughout most of the Old Testament period than the life of the world to come. Even at the beginning of the second century B.C. Ben Sira regards posterity's remembrance of a good man's virtues as the kind of immortality which ought chiefly to be desired.276 But when the persecution broke out under Antiochus Epiphanes, the fear of the Lord was more likely to lead to an early and painful death than to length of days. The martyrs had the faith to perceive that death and the gloom of Sheol could not be the final issue of their loyalty to God. The hope of resurrection blazed up and burned brightly before their eyes, giving them added courage to endure their torments. While the doctrine of resurrection was implicit in the biblical revelation at a much earlier date-Jesus pointed out that it is involved in God's designation of himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in Ex. 3:6277-it did not receive general acceptance among the Jews until the age of persecution, but from then on it became a cardinal doctrine in Judaism (except among the Sadducees, whose party, however, did not survive the catastrophe of A.D. 70).
36 When the recipients of the letter read of some who experienced278 "mocking and scourging, chains and imprisonment," they might well think of members of their own community who had suffered some of these things in earlier days, as our author had already reminded them. And if similar experiences awaited them again, it might help them to realize that they were not the first to tread this path. The martyrs referred to in v. 35 experienced mockery and scourging before they died;279 and so did the pioneer and perfecter of faith himself. Since, however, the subject of this verse is "others,"280 our author probably had in mind others than the martyrs alluded to in v. 35. And one Old Testament figure of whom he may very well have thought was Jeremiah, the prophet of the new covenant. On one occasion Jeremiah was beaten and put in the stocks,281 and complained that he had been made a laughingstock and an object of mockery not only by the public at large but by members of his own family.282 At a later date he was beaten again and put in prison,283 from which he was taken out and thrown into the muddy cistern from which he was rescued by Ebed-melech the Ethiopian.284
37a Jeremiah may also have been in our author's mind when he speaks of those who were stoned; this was his fate, according to tradition, at the hands of the Jews in Egypt who could not abide his protest against their continuing idolatry.285 Jerusalem itself had a reputation, our Lord himself being witness, for killing the prophets and stoning those who were sent to her;286 and our author may have in mind (among others) the example actually mentioned by Jesus: the priest-prophet Zechariah, who was stoned to death at the instance of King Joash "in the court of Yahweh's house" (2 Chron. 24:21).287
As for being "sawn in two," this was the traditional fate of the prophet Isaiah during Manasseh's reign. The apocryphon called the Ascension of Isaiah, which records the prophet's death,288 is a composite work, Christian in its completed form; but the record of Isaiah's martyrdom which it incorporates (especially parts of Asc. Isa. 1:1-3:12; 5:lb-14) is of Jewish origin and exhibits affinities with the Qumran literature.289 It tells how Isaiah, to avoid the wickedness rampant in Jerusalem under Manasseh, left the capital for Bethlehem and then withdrew to the hill country. There he was seized and sawn in two with a wooden saw; before his death he commanded his disciples to escape the persecution by going to Phoenicia, "because," he said, "for me only has God mingled the cup" (Asc. Isa. 5:13).290
Some through faith, we have been told, "escaped the edge of the. sword," but some through faith "were killed by the sword." Elijah escaped Jezebel's vengeance, but other prophets of the Lord were "slain ... with the sword" at that time (1 Kings 19:10). If Jeremiah was delivered from Jehoiakim when that king sought his life, his fellow-prophet Uriah was not so fortunate; he foretold the doom of Judah and Jerusalem in similar terms to those of Jeremiah, and when he fled to Egypt he was extradited from there and brought before Jehoiakim, "who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the burial place of the common people" (Jer. 26:23). By faith one lived, and by faith the other died. So too in the apostolic age Herod Agrippa I "killed James the brother of John with the sword" (Acts 12:2); but when he tried to do the same to Peter, Peter escaped his hands.
37b-38 The following words are echoed by Clement of Rome when he exhorts his readers to be "imitators of those who `went about in sheepskins and goatskins,' announcing the advent of Christ"; he refers, he says, to the prophets Elijah and Elisha, and also Ezekiel (1 Clem. 17:1). Elijah, we know, wore "a garment of haircloth" (2 Kings 1:8);291 and in the Ascension of Isaiah (2:10) those who accompanied Isaiah to his wilderness retreat "were all clothed in garments of hair." But the whole description of those who, roughly clad like this, endured destitution, affliction, and ill-treatment as they wandered in desolate places and sought the shelter of caves, reminds us especially of those godly Jews who fled from the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes-the "wise among the people" who, in Daniel's vision, fell "by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder, for some days" (Dan. 11:33).292 Such were the "many who were seeking righteousness and justice" who, in the narrative of 1 Macc. 2:29-38, "went down to the wilderness to dwell there" with their families, "because evils pressed heavily upon them." When they were besieged in their hiding places they refused to break the law by offering resistance or leaving their caves on the sabbath day, but died "in their innocence" to the number of a thousand persons. "C'etait magnifique, mais ce n'etait pas la guerre "; these were indeed men and women "of whom the world was not worthy." They were outlawed as people who were unfit for civilized society; the truth was that civilized society was unfit for them.293 They might well take on their lips the psalmist's cry to God:
Faith in God carries with it no guarantee of comfort in this world: this was no doubt one of the lessons which our author wished his readers to learn. But it does carry with it great reward in the only world that ultimately matters.
9. Epilogue: Faith's Vindication Comes with Christ (11:39-40)
39 All these295 were well attested for their faith, yet they did not receive what they had been promised,296
40 for God had provided something better with us in view, so that they could not attain their perfection apart from us.
39 From righteous Abel to those whose faith was so nobly manifested on the very eve of the coming of Christ, they all "won their record for faith"297 (Moffatt). Some of them, as we were told in v. 33, "obtained promises," but none of them received the promise in the sense of witnessing its fulfilment. They lived and died in prospect of a fulfilment which none of them experienced on earth; yet so real was that fulfilment to them that it gave them power to press upstream, against the current of the environment, and to live on earth as citizens of that commonwealth whose foundations are firmly laid in the unseen and eternal order. Their record is on high, and on earth as well, for the instruction and encouragement of men and women of later days.
40 But now the promise has been fulfilled; the age of the new covenant has dawned; the Christ to whose day they looked forward has come and by his self-offering and his high-priestly ministry in the presence of God he has procured perfection for them-and for us. "With us in mind, God had made a better plan,298 that only in company with us should they reach their perfection" (NEB). They and we together now enjoy unrestricted access to God through Christ, as fellow-citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. The "better plan" which God had made embraces the better hope, the better promises, the better covenant, the better sacrifices, the better and abiding possession, and the better resurrection299 which is their heritage, and ours.
HEBREWS 12
E. JESUS, THE PIONEER AND PERFECTER OF FAITH (12:1-3)
1 We for our part, surrounded as we are by so great a cloud of witnesses, must get rid of every weight, and of sin which so readily ensnares2 us, so as to run with steadfast endurance the race for which we are entered,
2 keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer of faith and the one who has finished the course. For the sake of the joy set before him, he bore the cross,3 despising the disgrace, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 Yes, consider him, how he has borne4 such hostility of sinners against himself;5 this will keep you from growing weary in soul and losing heart.6
1 In surveying the men and women whose faith was exhibited so signally in pre-Christian ages, our author has said repeatedly that they were well attested by virtue of their faith; to them all, as to Abel, God himself bore witness. But now they in turn are called witnesses. A "cloud" of witnesses is a good classical locution for a "host" of witnesses.? But in what sense are they "witnesses"? Not, probably, in the sense of spectators,8 watching their successors as they in their turn run the race for which they have entered; but rather in the sense that by their loyalty and endurance they have borne witness to the possibilities of the life of faith. It is not so much they who look at us as we who look to them-for encouragement. They have borne witness to the faithfulness of God; they were, in a manner of speaking, witnesses to Christ before his incarnation, for they lived in the good of that promise which has been realized in him. "The divinely inspired prophets," said Ignatius, "lived according to Jesus Christ. That is precisely why they were persecuted, being inspired by his grace, so as to convince the disobedient that there is one God, who has manifested himself through Jesus Christ his Son ..." (Magnesians 8:2).9
This is one of the early examples of the beginning of the semantic change by which the ordinary Greek word for "witness" acquired its distinctive Christian sense of "martyr"-a change which we find so thoroughly established by the time we come to Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom (c. A.D. 235) that he uses the word, without feeling himself under any necessity to explain why he so uses it, of "one who of his own free choice chooses to die for the sake of religion" rather than save his life by renouncing it.10 Other New Testament occurrences of the word which could have encouraged this semantic change are found in Acts 22:20, where Paul in prayer speaks of "the blood of Stephen thy witness," and in Rev. 2:13, where the glorified Christ, addressing the Pergamene church, mentions "Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you." T. W. Manson, in an important article on this points out that the association between faithful witness and martyrdom goes back well before New Testament days; he illustrates his point with a reference to Neh. 9:26, where the Levites, in their prayer of confession to God, recall how the people of Israel "killed thy prophets who had warned12 them in order to turn them back to thee." And certainly the testimony and sufferings of the prophets play a prominent part in our author's survey of men and women of faith toward the end of Heb. 11.
There they are, then, and with their record to encourage us let us in our turn cultivate endurance like theirs as we run "the race for which we are entered" (NEB).13 Even those who have greeted the promise to which Old Testament saints looked forward, who live in the age of fulfilment and have experienced "the mighty works of the coming age" (6:5), continue to need patience (10:36).14 Christ has appeared on earth, in fulfilment of the promise of God, and has done "away with sin by his own sacrifice" (9:26); but now he is no longer present on earth in visible form, for he is exalted above the heavens. His people therefore, while they wait for his second appearing to bring them final salvation (9:28), must still endure, like Moses, as seeing "the Invisible One" (11:27). True, they have greater incentive and fuller encourage ment than any of their predecessors who lived before Christ came, but they too have their contest to engage in, their race to run. The description of the good life in terms of an athletic engagement is readily paralleled both within the New Testament15 and outside it.16 It may have suggested itself the more readily to our author's mind at this point because of the athletic or agonistic terminology in which the sufferings of the martyrs under Antiochus Epiphanes are repeatedly portrayed in 4 Maccabees-an Alexandrine treatise of which there are several echoes in the present context of our epistle. The martyrs contend17 in a contest18 in which the pagan king is their antagonist;19 and true religion20 wins the victory by their endurance;21 the universe and the whole race of mankind are the spectators,22 while Virtue occupies the president's box. The prize with which the martyrs are crowned is eternal life.23
So in the Christian contest the prize is assured to all who compete lawfully24 and run with patient endurance. "So run," said Paul to the Corinthians, "that you may obtain" the prize (1 Cor. 9:24); and our author's advice to his readers is to the same effect.
The athlete must discipline himself;25 he must divest himself of all superfluous weight,26 not only of heavy objects carried about the body but of excess bodily weight. There are many things which may be perfectly all right in their own way, but which hinder a competitor in the race of faith; they are "weights" which must be laid aside. It may well be that what is a hindrance to one entrant in this spiritual contest is not a hindrance to another; each must learn for himself what in his case is a weight or impediment. But there are other things which are not perfectly all right in their own way but are essentially wrong; there is "sin which so readily ensnares us." Our author is not referring so much to some specific sin, but to sin itself, as something which will inevitably encumber the runner's feet and trip him up before he has taken more than a step or two.27 This appears to be the sense of the common reading here, the adjective euperistatos. "Some have indeed fancifully rendered it `the sin which men admire,' inasmuch as peristatos may convey the sense of being gaped at.28 But that supposition is utterly foreign to the context. The surest clue to the expression presents itself in the twofold meaning of peristasis and its cognate verb, which has been explicitly noticed both by Epictetus (ii.6) and Marcus Aurelius (ix.13). It can either indicate the circumstantia or surroundings of a person or event, or else be used in a pejorative acceptation of a state of beleaguerment, of exigencies and straits, in like fashion with thlipsis, `a squeeze,' or the Latin angustiae. This latter sense dominates our euperistatos." So writes E. K. Simpson,29 adding that a constricting environment "may work for good or ill." "The difference in effect," he says, "is akin to that of a girdle or a shackle respectively. The girdle braces its wearer, the shackle impedes him. Euperistatos presents the latter spectacle by way of warning, the picture of besetting sin that has become a household word and a salutary admonition to the Christian athlete. The sin so prone to hamper or trammel would be our version," he concludes.
The alternative reading euperispastos, attested by our oldest extant witness for the text of the epistle, would bear the sense "easily distracting" in this context.30 Anything that distracts an athlete from the contest in which he is competing will quickly put him out of the running.
2 Everything that would encumber him or divert his attention must therefore be put away, and the athlete must keep his eye fixed on the goal toward which he is pressing. In 4 Macc. 17:9f. the unknown Alexandrine writer suggests as an epitaph for the Maccabaean martyrs the following words: "Here an aged priest and an aged woman and seven sons lie buried through the violence of a tyrant who wished to destroy the Hebrews' polity. They verily vindicated our nation, keeping their eyes fixed on God31 and enduring torments even unto death."32 In language reminiscent of this our author now exhorts his readers to keep their "eyes fixed on Jesus,33 on whom faith depends from start to finish" (NEB). The earlier witnesses supply incentive in abundance; but in Jesus we have one who is par excellence "the faithful witness" (Rev. 1:5).34 He is faith's "pioneer and perfecter" (RSV). In Greek the definite article stands before "faith"; in the AV/KJV, the ERV/ARV, and the RSV this is represented by the possessive pronoun "our." But more probably we should recognize here the regular Greek usage of the article before an abstract noun,35 where English as regularly omits it. Jesus, that is to say, is presented as the one who has blazed the trail of faith and as the one who himself ran the race of faith to its triumphant finish. But in what sense is he the trail-blazer or pathfinder of faith? We can understand how he is called the pioneer of salvation in Heb. 2:10;36 apart from him there is no Savior. We can understand, too, how for his people in the Christian age he provides a better example and incentive in running the race of faith than all who went before him. But when we consider that they did go before him, how can he be called the pioneer of faith? Our author's answer might well be that they did not really go before him; he went before them as truly as he has gone before us. "Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt" (as Jude most probably says),37 who accompanied and nourished that same people in the wilderness (as Paul quite explicitly says),38 is perhaps envisaged here as having led all the people of God, from earliest times, along the path of faith, although, since his incarnation and passion, his personal example makes his leadership available to his people in a way that was impossible before. Moreover, since our author clearly regards Jesus as the one to whom all the prophets and martyrs bore witness, from Abel who, "though dead, still speaks," right on to those who won their record through faith on the very eve of the Incarnation, Jesus could well be considered as having provided them in some degree with the incentive and encouragement they needed in running their race with patience, as he has provided his people ever since with similar incentive and encouragement in the fullest degree.
Not only is Jesus the pioneer of faith; in him faith has reached its perfection. "He trusts in God,"39 they said as they stood by his cross; the implication was: "Much good his trust in God is doing him now!" The words, though not their implication, were truer than they knew. The whole life of Jesus was characterized by unbroken and unquestioning faith in his heavenly Father, and never more so than when in Gethsemane he committed himself to his Father's hands for the ordeal of the cross with the words: "not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark 14:36). It was sheer faith in God, unsupported by any visible or tangible evidence, that carried him through the taunting, the scourging, the crucifying, and the more bitter agony of rejection, desertion, and dereliction. "Come down from the cross, and we will believe," they said.40 Had he come down, by some gesture of supernatural power, he would never have been hailed as the "perfecter of faith" nor would he have left any practical example for others to follow.
No; he "bore the cross, despising the disgrace. 1141 To die by crucifixion was to plumb the lowest depths of disgrace; it was a punishment reserved for those who were deemed most unfit to live, a punishment for those who were subhuman. From so degrading a death Roman citizens were exempt by ancient statute; the dignity of the Roman name would be besmirched by being brought into association with anything as vile as the cross.42 For slaves, and criminals of low degree, it was regarded as a suitable means of execution, and a grim deterrent to others. But this disgrace Jesus disregarded, as something not worthy to be taken into account when it was a question of his obedience to the will of God. So he brought faith to perfection by his endurance of the cross-and now the place of highest exaltation is his. The pioneer of salvation has been made perfect through sufferings,43 and has therefore taken his seat "at the right hand of the throne of God."44 His exaltation there, with all that it means for his people's well-being and for the triumph of God's purpose in the universe, is "the joy set before him," for the sake of which45 he submitted to shame and death.
45. The preposition avri has here the same force as in v. 16 below, where Esau sold his birthright for ((Ivri) a single helping of food. The interpretation according to which Christ accepted suffering and death instead of the joy which might otherwise have been his, whether a continuation of his preincarnate joy or joy without suffering in his incarnate life, is much less suitable in the context. It was in order to secure the joy set before him (tf15 npox.Eiµevrl; avrw Xat?ac) that he ran the race set before him (rov npoxEi vov ... aywva). The "joy" here corresponds to the "glories" in 1 Pet. 1:11 ("the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them"; cf. Luke 24:26).
It is not difficult to trace an affinity between the joy of which our author speaks here and the joy to which Jesus himself makes repeated reference in the upper room discourses of the Fourth Gospel. He tells his disciples there of his desire that his joy may be in them, so that their joy may be complete (John 15:11; cf. 16:20, 21, 22, 24); and in his high-priestly prayer he asks the Father "that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves" (John 17:13). So here, "the joy set before him" is not something for himself alone, but something to be shared with those for whom he died as sacrifice and lives as high priest.46 The throne of God, to which he has been exalted, is the place to which he has gone as his people's forerunner.47 That is the goal of the pathway of faith; the Pioneer has reached it first, but others who triumph in the same contest will share it with him.48 Our author would have found himself in perfect sympathy with the terms of the premise given to the Laodicean church in Rev. 3:21: "He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne."49
3 Christ has thus become his people's supreme inspirer of faith. When they become weary on the way, and grow faint at heart because there seems no end to the trials they have to endure, let them consider5t him. He suffered uncomplainingly the hostility and malevolence of sinful people; the recipients of this epistle had not been called upon to endure anything like their Master's sufferings.
The variant reading, which described our Lord's opponents as "sinners against themselves,"52 for all the strength of its attestation does not seem to have much point in this context. Attempts to give it point-such as the observation that "He, whom we so often `contradict,' is our true self"53-do not commend themselves as successful or convincing.
F. DISCIPLINE IS FOR SONS (12:4-11)
4 In your struggle against54 sin you have not yet55 resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
5 You have forgotten the word of encouragement which addresses you as sons: 56
7 It is for discipline that you endure what you do.58 God deals with you as sons. What son is there whom his father does not discipline?
8 But if you have no part in the discipline which is shared by all, then you are bastards and not trueborn sons.
9 Again, we had our natural fathers who disciplined us, and we paid them respect; shall we not much more59 be submissive to the Father of our spirits60 and so gain life?
10 Those fathers disciplined us for a few days as they thought fit, but our spiritual Father disciplines us for our advantage, so that we may receive a share in his holiness.
11 No discipline61 for the time being appears pleasant-indeed, it is painful. Later, however, it yields a peaceful harvest of righteousness for those who have been trained by it.
4 In his endurance of the hostility of sinners Christ suffered death.62 So too did many of the heroes of faith celebrated in ch. 11. Some of them are described as having "resisted even to the torments of death for the sake of the law."63 The recipients of this epistle had in earlier days endured severe persecution for their faith, but they had not yet been called upon to seal their testimony with their blood.64 (This, as we have seen, may give us some limited help in deciding who they were and at what time they could be addressed in these terms.)65 They might yet have to meet fiercer trials than had come their way thus far; but this was no time to be discouraged, when they thought of others who remained steadfast amid sufferings much worse than theirs. They ought rather to realize that their present hardships were a token of their heavenly Father's love for them, and the means by which he was training them to be more truly his sons.
5-8 Let them recall the words of wisdom in Prov. 3:11f., and they would be able to view their troubles in their proper perspective. These words remind those who would be truly wise that when hardship is their lot they should accept it as God's method of training and disciplining them, and as a token that they are really his beloved sons and daughters.66 A father would spend much care and patience on the upbringing of a trueborn son whom he hoped to make a worthy heir; and at the time such a son might have to undergo much more irksome discipline than an illegitimate child for whom no future of honor and responsibility was envisaged, and who therefore might be left more or less to please himself.67
Philo quotes this passage from Proverbs to much the same effect as our author does. "So profitable a thing is some sort of hardship," he says, "that even its most humiliating form, servitude, is reckoned a great blessing."68 Then he argues that Esau's servitude to his brother Jacob, foretold in their father Isaac's blessing, was intended for Esau's good, and continues: "For this reason, it seems to me, did one of Moses' disciples, a man whose name means 'peaceable,'69 who is called Solomon in our ancestral tongue, say:
All sons have to be disciplined,71 our author says; he has already said that even Christ, Son though he was, "learned obedience by what he suffered" (Heb. 5:8).72
9-10 Our earthly fathers, he continues, disciplined us73 for the limited period of years which preceded our coming of age, and received proper respect from us. We accepted the discipline because it was their province to impose it and our duty to submit to it; they knew, or thought they knew, what was best for us and subjected us to the discipline which commended itself to them.74 If our heavenly Father also imposes discipline on us, shall we not accept it willingly from him? Our earthly fathers may sometimes have been mistaken in their estimate of the discipline we needed; our heavenly Father, in the perfection of his wisdom and love, can be relied upon never to impose any discipline on us which is not for our good.75 The supreme good he has in view for his children is this, that they should share his holiness.76
Here positive holiness of life is meant; the emphasis is rather different from that found earlier in the epistle where the sanctification procured for believers by the sacrifice of Christ is that cleansing of conscience which fits them to approach God in worship.77 That was the initial gift of holiness; the holiness mentioned here is rather the goal for which God is preparing his people78-that entire sanctification which is consummated in their manifestation with Christ in glory.79 But this consummation is not attained "sudden, in a minute"; as Paul and Barnabas told the young churches of South Galatia, "through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22).
The designation of God as "the Father of our spirits"80 is unique. We may compare it with the phrase "the God of the spirits of all flesh" in Num. 16:22; 27:16, and with the frequent designation of God as "the Lord of spirits" in the Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37:2, ete.).81 But in the present context its force is plain: as "the fathers of our flesh" are our physical (or earthly) fathers, so "the Father of our spirits" is our spiritual (or heavenly) Father. To try to trace metaphysical implications in the phrase is unwarranted.
11 "Discipline, no doubt, is never pleasant; at the time it seems painful, but in the end it yields for those who have been trained by it the peaceful harvest of an honest life" (NEB). The pedagogical value of suffering finds classical expression in Elihu's interposition in the debate between Job and his friends (Job 32:2-37:24). Elihu does not speak the last or greatest word on suffering in the Old Testament, but he represents a marked advance on the traditional position taken up by Job's three friends. If a man does not heed the admonition of God given in night-visions and the like then:
Similarly one of the psalmists could say:
Our Lord bade his disciples rejoice when they were persecuted for righteousness' sake, because the kingdom of heaven was theirs (Matt. 5:10-12 par. Luke 6:22f.). The Christians of Thessalonica are similarly told that the persecutions endured by them, while they are a token of God's righteous judgment on their persecutors, are the means by which they themselves are fitted for the kingdom of God (2 Thess. 1:4-7).83 So too, when four rabbis visited Rabbi Eliezer as he lay sick in bed, three of them praised him for his piety, but Rabbi Aqiba comforted him with the assurance that "chastisements are precious"-and supported his statement by an argument which included a reference to the Proverbs of Solomon.84 A twentieth-century restatement of much the same argument was made by C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain.85
It may be that our author's description of the "harvest of righteousness" as "peaceable" represents nothing more than a coincidence with Philo's explanation of Solomon's name as meaning "peaceable," in the quotation given above.86 Even so, it is an interesting coincidence in view of our author's quotation of Prov. 3:11f. The person who accepts discipline at the hand of God as something designed by his heavenly Father for his good will cease to feel resentful and rebellious; he has "calmed and quieted" his soul,87 which thus provides fertile soil for the cultivation of a righteous life, responsive to the will of God.
G. LET US THEN BE UP AND DOING (12:12-17)
12 Therefore, strengthen your drooping arms and your paralyzed knees,88
13 and make89 straight paths for your feet,90 so that lame joints may not be dislocated but rather be healed.
14 Pursue peace91 with everybody, and the sanctification apart from which no one will see the Lord.
15 See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, and that no root which produces bitter fruit springs up and troubles92 you, through the infection which many93 contract from it.
16 Make sure that there is no fornicator among you, or any irreligious person like Esau, who sold his birthright for one helping of food.
17 You know94 that when he later wished to inherit the blessing he was rejected, finding no opportunity for a change of mind, though he begged for it with tears.
12-13 Reverting to his athletic figure of speech, our author bids his readers brace their flagging limbs and press on to the goal. Some of their number were feeling especially discouraged and disinclined to make the necessary effort; the others should do everything possible to help them. The exhortation is couched in Old Testament language-drawn partly from words of encouragement addressed to exiled Jews who felt that the promised deliverance and restoration would never come and partly, like the exhortation of vv. 5 and 6, from the book of Proverbs. The aptness of the Isaiah quotation needs no emphasizing:
The context of the quotation, if not the words actually reproduced, repeats the assurance of 10:37 that in "a very little while, the Coming One will come; he will make no delay." The precise meaning of the Hebrew verb in Prov. 4:26a is uncertain,96 but the Septuagint is here used (with the singular num ber replaced by the plural) to urge the smoothing of the way97 for those who are weak and spiritually lame, and who might be prevented from continuing their course if they were tripped up and permanently disabled. The verb translated "be put out of joint" (RSV, NEB) is rendered "be turned out of the way"98 in the AV/KJV and the ERV/ARV, but dislocation, not deviation, is suggested by the following words, "but rather be healed." Sprains and similar injuries must be bound up, so that the whole community may complete the course without loss.
14 The athletic metaphor is now abandoned, and the same teaching is expressed in straightforward ethical terms.99 "Pursue peace with everybody." We recall our Lord's benediction on the peacemakers, "for they shall be called sons of God" (Matt. 5:9), and Paul's injunction to the Roman Christians: "If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all" (Rom. 12:18).100 It might not be possible, for their persecutors might refuse to countenance "peaceful coexistence" with them; but they themselves must remain peaceable in attitude and conduct and never take the initiative in stirring up strife. If this was their duty with regard to mankind in general, how much more was it their duty to "be at peace with one another" (Mark 9:50).
"The sanctification'°' apart from which no one will see the Lord" is, as the words themselves make plain, no optional extra in the Christian life but something which belongs to its essence. It is the pure in heart, and none but they, who shall see God (Matt. 5:8). Here, as in v. 10, practical holiness of life is meant, the converse of those things against which a warning is uttered in the verses which follow. We are reminded of Paul's words to the Thessalonians: "This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication ..." (1 Thess. 4:3)-for the things which are unholy effectively debar those who practice them from inheriting the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9f.). Our author is as far as Paul was from encouraging antinomianism in his readers. Those who are called to be partakers of God's holiness must be holy themselves; this is the recurring theme of the Pentateuchal law of holiness, echoed again in the New Testament: "You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy" (Lev. 11:45, etc.; cf. 1 Pet. 1:15f.). To see the Lord is the highest and most glorious blessing mortals can enjoy, but the beatific vision is reserved for those who are holy in heart and life.'02
15 If such holiness is to be pursued, then care must be taken to detect and nip in the bud any tendency that would be inimical to it. Let them see to it that none of them fails to attain103 the grace of God. If it is the grace of God that sets people's feet at the entrance of the pathway of faith, it is equally the grace of God that enables them to continue and complete that pathway. Paul too found it necessary to beg some of his converts not to "receive the grace of God in vain" (2 Cor. 6:1) and to warn others who had begun to run well but had come up against an obstacle at an early stage that they had "fallen away from grace" (Gal. 5:4, 7). "Grace for timely help" (4:16) is constantly available to the people of Christ, and Peter urges his readers to have their hope securely fixed "on the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:13). If nevertheless some of them fall short of the grace of God, it is not because his grace was inaccessible, but because they would not avail themselves of it, and have therefore failed to reach the goal which is attainable only by his gracethe vision of God of which our author has just spoken.
If some incipient sin manifests itself in their midst, it must be eradicated at once; if it is tolerated, this is a sure way of falling short of God's grace, for many, if not the whole community,104 will then be contaminated. Such a sin is called a "root of bitterness, 11105 in language borrowed from Deut. 29:18, where Moses warns the Israelites against any inclination to fall into the idolatrous practices of Canaan, "lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit" (lit. "breeding gall and wormwood").105 Deut. 29:18 with its context plays a similar admonitory role in the literature of the Qumran community; for example, in one of the Hymns of Thanksgiving it is said of the opponents of the community: "A root breeding gall and worm wood is in their thoughts; and in the stubbornness of their hearts they go astray, and inquire of thee amid their idols."107 But perhaps the best commentary on our author's words here is his earlier warning in Heb. 3:12: "See to it, brothers, that there is not in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, deserting the living God."108
16 In telling them to make sure that they have no fornicator among them, he may conceivably be following Old Testament usage in employing this terminology to denote idolatry or apostasy;109 but most probably he has in mind the literal sense of the word. It may be that Esau is mentioned only as an example of an "irreligious person,"110 since in the Old Testament record Esau is not charged with fornication-unless the meaning of the term be stretched to cover his marriage with two daughters of Heth, who made life bitter for his parents (Gen. 26:34f.).111 Postbiblical tradition, however, makes Esau a vicious character. Philo interprets the statement that "Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field" (Gen. 25:27) to mean that "vice, which hunts after the passions, is unfit by nature to dwell in the city of virtue, but pursues a boorish and undisciplined life in complete Elsewhere he says, with reference to the description of Esau in Gen. 27:11, that "the `hairy man' is the unrestrained, lecherous, impure and unholy man."113 The Palestinian Targum on Gen. 25:29 enlarges on Esau's coming home exhausted on the day he sold Jacob his birthright by saying that "in that day he had committed five transgressions," one of which consisted in adultery with a betrothed maiden. Similar accusations against him are recorded in other places in rabbinical literature.114 Whether our author had Esau in mind as a fornicator is not at all certain;115 it is certain, however, that he judged it nec essary to warn his readers against harboring any such person, for he reverts to the subject again in Heb. 13:4: "God will judge fornicators and adulterers."
The incident which he does recall from Esau's career illustrates not fornication but "profaneness" or "irreligion," that is to say, the lack of any sense of spiritual values. Nothing is related of him in Genesis which is positively to his discredit; he is the "hunting, shooting, fishing" type of man whose chief concerns are the material interests of the moment. When Jacob by deceit received the blessing intended for Esau, Esau fell into a towering rage, and threatened his brother's life; but he soon forgot his resentment, together (possibly) with the cause of it. Compared with such a sportsman, Jacob in some respects cuts a poor figure. Yet, even in his most disreputable moments, Jacob showed an appreciation of the heritage promised by God to his family and a determination not to miss that heritage; and at the end, as we have seen, he won his record for On the other hand, so little did Esau value the birthright with which that heritage was bound up that in a moment of hunger he sold it "for a mess of "Thus Esau despised his birthright" is the summing up of that incident in the Old Testament record (Gen. 25:34).
17 He did, indeed, regret his hasty action later. Our author sees a close link between his despising of his birthright in Gen. 25:29-34 and his losing the blessing due to the firstborn in Gen. 27:1-40. It may be implied in the Genesis narrative itself that if Esau had not sold his birthright Jacob would not have found it so easy to steal the blessing from him. But when he came in from the field to receive the blessing, he found himself and though he wept loudly and bitterly 119 there was no way of retrieving the situation. His father could not and would not call back the blessing pronounced on Jacob: "yes, and he shall be blessed" (Gen. 27:33). The ARV ("he found no place for a change of mind in his father") interprets the "repentance" for which Esau found no opportunity as a change of mind on Isaac's part, but this is not the natural construction of the words. "He found no way open for second thoughts" (NEB). The pronoun "it"120 in the clause "though he begged for it with tears" most probably refers to the blessing.
H. THE EARTHLY SINAI AND THE HEAVENLY ZION (12:18-24)
18 The mountain122 to which you have come is not one which can be touched,123 a mountain burning with fire, amid darkness, gloom, and storm,124
19 with trumpet blast125 and the sound of words, which caused the hearers to beg that nothing further might be said.126
20 They could not bear the command: "Even if a beast touches the mountain, it is to be stoned. "127
21 Indeed, so fearful was the sight that Moses said, "I am filled with fear128 and trembling. "129
22 No: the mountain to which you have come is Mount Zion; you have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels130 in festal array,131
23 to the assembly of firstborn ones who are enrolled in heaven,132 to God the judge of all, to the spirits133 of the righteous who have attained perfection,134
24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which has something better135 to say than Abel's. 136
18-19 Our author reverts to the contrast already pointed in 2:2-4 between the giving of the law and the reception of the gospel. Awesome as were the circumstances of the giving of the law in Moses' day, more awesome by far are the privileges associated with the gospel, if they are despised or refused. Those who wholeheartedly believe the gospel and gladly embrace its privileges need have no fear; they are urged to enter the heavenly sanctuary with full confidence through the blood of Jesus.137 The stern note of warning is for those who, having begun to make an approach, fall back. They are reminded that the consequences of despising the gospel are even more dreadful than were the consequences of despising the law.
The description of the terrors of Sinai is based on the account in Ex. 19:16-19; 20:18-21, with Moses' recollection of the scene forty years later in Deut. 4:11f. The mountain was so charged with the holiness of the God who manifested himself there that for man or beast to touch it meant certain death. "Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder" (Ex. 19:18f.). 138 Then, "when all the people perceived the thunderings and the lightnings and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled; and they stood afar off, and said to Moses, `You speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die"' (Ex. 20:18f.).
21 And not only were the people terrified; even Moses, privileged as he was to press up into the thick darkness where God was, was filled with numinous awe at the mysterium tremendum etfascinans. His words, "I am filled with fear and trembling,"140 are not recorded in the Pentateuchal descriptions of the Sinai theophany; the closest Old Testament parallel is in Deut. 9:19, where he reminds the people of his supplication for them after the incident of the golden calf: "For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, which Yahweh bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you." Another parallel appears in Stephen's speech, where in face of the theophany at the burning bush "Moses trembled, and did not dare to look" (Acts 7:32). Our author may have been acquainted with a haggadic account of the Sinai theophany which made explicit mention of Moses' fear and trembling on this occasion too.
22 The events of the Exodus and the wilderness wanderings, as we have seen before, are treated in the apostolic age as parables of Christian experience.141 But Christians have come to no sacred mountain which can be touched physically but to the heavenly dwelling-place of God, the true and eternal Mount Zion. "You have come" may denote their conversion to Christianity; the Greek verb is that from which "proselyte" is derived,142 and while it is such a common verb that normally no such implication could be read into it, the particular form used in this particular context carries with it overtones of conversion. Philo uses this same perfect tense of the verb in question when, in a meditation on Moses' vision of God in Ex. 33:13-23, he says that all kindred souls to Moses who refuse fables and embrace truth obtain the approval of God, whether this has been their attitude from the beginning or they have been converted to it subsequently. 143 These last, he goes on, Moses "calls 'proselytes' because they `have come to' a new and God-loving commonwealth." 144 So, by virtue of their accepting the gospel, the readers of this epistle had come to that spiritual realm some of whose realities are detailed in the following clauses.
Mount Zion was the site of the Jebusite stronghold which David captured and made his royal residence in the seventh year of his reign.145 He made it the religious center of his kingdom by installing there "the ark of God, which is called by the name of Yahweh of hosts, who sits enthroned on the cherubim" (2 Sam. 6:2). Thus Zion became the earthly dwelling-place of God, "the city which Yahweh had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there" (1 Kings 14:21). For (in the words of an Asaphite psalm):
When later Solomon built his temple on the hill to the north of Zion, and in stalled the sacred ark there, the name Zion was extended to include this further area, and became in practice synonymous with Jerusalem-
As the earthly Zion was the meeting point for the tribes of the old Israel, so the heavenly Zion is the meeting point for the new Israe1.146 Their heritage, the place of their solemnities, is "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." If the movable tabernacle in the wilderness was constructed according to the pattern of the sanctuary on high, so the temple and city of Jerusalem were material copies of eternal archetypes.147 Both in Jewish and in Christian thought the heavenly counterpart of the earthly Jerusalem is familiar-the rabbis inferred the existence of the heavenly archetype from the words of Ps. 122:3 (quoted above), which they rendered: "Jerusalem, which is built like the city that is its fellow"148-the oldest approximately datable reference to it being Paul's words in Gal. 4:26, "the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother."149 In the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, which is to be dated soon after A.D. 70, Baruch is told on the eve of the destruction of the First Temple that this is not the true city of God; the true city was revealed by God to Adam before his fall, to Abraham when God made a covenant with him, and to Moses at the same time as he was shown the pattern in the mount.150 In Rev. 21:2f. "the holy city, new Jerusalem," which has existed eternally in heaven, is seen coming down to earth, so that henceforth "the dwelling of God is with men, and he will dwell with them" as their covenantGod.151 This is not our author's perspective: the new Jerusalem has not yet come down to mankind, but in the spiritual realm they already have access to it. They have become fellow-citizens with Abraham of that well-founded city for which he looked; it is the city or commonwealth which comprises the whole family of faith, God's true dwelling-place.152 Even now this city has not been manifested in its fulness; it is still in one sense "the city which is to come" (13:14), but the privileges of its citizenship are already enjoyed by faith. The people of God are still a pilgrim people, treading the "highways to Zion," but by virtue of his sure promise they have already arrived there in spirit. Our author may retain the symbolism of "up there" when he speaks of God, but he makes it clear that his people need not climb the heavenly steeps to seek him, for he is immediately accessible to each believing heart, making his dwelling in the fellowship of the faithful.153
You have come, he continues, "to myriads of angels in festal array."154 The myriads of angels remind us of the "ten thousands of holy ones" who attended God at the giving of the law on Sinai (Deut. 33:2), or of the "thousand thousands" whom Daniel saw serving God, and "ten thousand times ten thousand" who stood before him (Dan. 7:10).155 In the Qumran Hymn of the Initiants a person who knows himself justified by God proclaims that God has caused him and his fellow-believers "to inherit the portion of the Holy Ones; he has joined their assembly to the sons of heaven, to be a council of the community, a foundation of the holy building, an eternal planting in all time to come."156 Our author goes farther than this. He knows that the attendant angels are sent to minister to the heirs of salvation;157 how exalted the status of the heirs of salvation is may be gauged from the fact that the Son of God passed by angels in order to partake of flesh and blood with mankind.158 When, therefore, believers come to the myriads of angels it is not to worship them, but to worship the God whose servants they are.159
23 How then are we to understand the "assembly of firstborn ones who are enrolled in heaven"? One interpretation is that this is another way of designating the elect angels, called "firstborn" because they were created before human beings.160 So, when Hermas asked about the six young men whom he saw building the tower, the ancient lady told him that they were "the holy angels of God who were first created"-the myriads of other men whom he saw bringing up stones for the building being also "holy angels of God," but inferior in rank to the six.161 But against this interpretation is the description of these "firstborn" ones as "enrolled in heaven." The idea of enrollment in the heavenly book is regularly associated with human beings.162 "Rejoice that your names are written in heaven," said Jesus to his disciples (Luke 10:20); and in the Apocalypse repeated reference is made to those whose names are inscribed in "the Lamb's book of life" (Rev. 21:27, etc.).163 If, then, believers in Christ are said to have come to "the assembly of firstborn ones" in this sense, the reference may be to those men and women who lived and "died in faith" before Christ came, but who "apart from us" could not attain perfection.lM If so, the phrase is synonymous with "the spirits of the righteous" at the end of this verse. But more probably the reference is to the whole communion of saints, including those who, while "militant here on earth," are enrolled as citizens of heaven.165 To this community believers have come-not merely into its presence (as they have come into the presence of angels innumerable), but into its membership. All the people of Christ are the "firstborn" children of God, through their union with him who is the Firstbornpar excellence;166 their birthright is not to be bartered away, as was Esau's.167
Further, the readers have come to "God the judge of all"-or, as the phrase is more precisely rendered in the RSV, to "a judge who is God of all."168 The designation of God as "the Judge of all the earth" goes back to early biblical times (Gen. 18:25). The mention of God as judge in this context is calculated to emphasize the solemnity of the Christian's responsibility; it echoes an earlier reference to the one "to whom our account must be rendered," before whom our inmost being lies open to view (Heb. 4:13), and the warning of 10:30f. that, since the judgment of his people is God's prerogative, it is "a fearful thing" to fall into his hands.169 If we recognize a continuance of proselyte terminology here, we may recall Boaz's words of blessing on Ruth: "a full reward be given you by Yahweh, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge"170 (Ruth 2:12). The living God to whom believers have come is indeed the refuge and strength of his people, but the intimacy of their covenant-union with him is not unmixed with awe before his pure holiness.
As for "the spirits of the righteous who have attained perfection," 171 they are most probably believers of pre-Christian days, like those mentioned in 11:40, who could not attain perfection until Christ came in the fulness of time and "by one offering ... brought those who are sanctified to perfection" (10:14; 11:40). If it was the divine plan that "apart from us they could not attain their perfection," it is equally true that apart from them we could not be made perfect; by coming to God we have also come to those who in earlier times came to him believing "that he exists, and that he is a rewarder172 of those who seek him out" (11:6). They fulfilled the promise of 10:38, "my righteous one will live by faith"; and the words of Wisdom 3:1 have come true for them: "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God."173 No distinction in meaning can be pressed between "spirits" here and "souls" there. Our author's lack of reference to the coming resurrection does not mean that it found no place in his creed (we recall his words in Heb. 11:35 about a "better resurrection"); but it is plain that, for him, the souls of believers do not need to wait until the resurrection to be perfected. They are perfected already in the sense that they are with God in the heavenly Jerusalem.174
24 They have come to God; they have come to "the spirits of the righteous"; and they have come to him who is the mediator between God and mankind, "Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant." Their ancestors in Moses' day had been borne on eagles' wings and brought to God himself175 in terms of the old covenant; that old covenant, as we have already learned, has now been antiquated by the new one, of which Jesus is mediator. A different word for "new" is used here from that employed in the similar phrase in 9:15, but the different word is to be accounted for in terms of rhythm and not because of any distinction in meaning.176 Since Jesus' sacrifice of himself, those who come to God must "approach God through him" (7:25).
To "approach God through him" means "to have freedom of access into the holy place by Jesus' blood" (10:19); accordingly, believers are further said to have come to "the blood of sprinkling." This may remind us of "the sprinkling of the blood" at the time of the first Passover (11:28);177 but more probably our author is thinking of the covenant-blood of Christ as the antitype of the blood sprinkled at the inauguration of the old covenant. By the blood of the new covenant, symbolically applied, believers' hearts are "sprinkled clean from an evil conscience" (10:22). The removal of an evil conscience does away with the barrier between them and God; the sacrifice of Christ thus "has better things to tell than the blood of Abel" (NEB). Abel's blood cried out to God from the ground, protesting against his murder and appealing for vindication; 178 but the blood of Christ brings a message of cleansing, forgiveness, and peace with God to all who place their faith in him. (The idea that "the blood of Abel" here means the blood of Abel's sacrifice is totally inapposite.)
1. PAY HEED TO THE VOICE OF GOD! (12:25-29)
25 See to it179 that you do not refuse to hear the one who speaks. If there was no escape for those180 who refused to hear him when he addressed them on earth,181 still less will there be any escape for us if we refuse to hear him when he speaks from heaven.
26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised: "Yet once more, I will shake182 not only earth but heaven also. "183
27 This phrase,184 "Yet once more, " portends the removal of the things which are shaken,185 as belonging to the created order, so that the things which cannot be shaken may endure.
28 The kingdom which we receive is unshakable; therefore, let us give186 thanks187 and bring God acceptable188 worship,189 with humble reverence and awe,190
29 for indeed our God is a consuming fire.191
25 It is not suggested in the Exodus narrative that there was anything culpable in the people's request to Moses that God should not speak to them directly, but through an intermediary. In Deut. 5:28 they are indeed commended for the request, which sprang from their terror at the awe-inspiring circumstances of the theophany. When our author warns his readers not to "refuse to hear the one who speaks," he uses the same verb for refusing as he did in v. 19,192 where the people "begged that nothing further might be said"-or, as it might be rendered, "refused to have any further word spoken to them." But, whatever was the people's attitude when God spoke at Sinai, the Pentateuchal record makes it plain that time and again throughout their wilderness wanderings they failed to pay heed to the commandments of God, and suffered for their disobedience. This has formed the basis of a solemn warning in the earlier part of the epistle (3:7-15), and the warning is repeated here. The Israelites in the wilderness did not escape judgment when they disregarded the voice-the voice of God, surely193-that thundered from Sinai. But if it was from an earthly hill that God proclaimed the statutes which formed the basis of the old covenant, it is from the heavenly Zion, from his unseen throne, that he speaks in the gospel. The "how much more" argument of 2:2f. and 10:29 is pressed home again: to disobey the gospel incurs judgment more certain and terrible even than that incurred by disobedience to the law.
26 When God spoke from Sinai, "the whole mountain quaked greatly" (Ex. 19:18). This earthquake remained deeply rooted in the national memory, and is celebrated in the Psalter and other Old Testament poems.
195. Cf. also Judg. 5:4f.; Pss. 77:18; 114:4, 7. It may have been on one of these poetical passages that our author depended here, since the LXX of Ex. 19:18 speaks not of the quaking of the earth but of the terror of the people.
In the Old Testament an earthquake is also expected to mark the coming day of the Lord, "when he rises to terrify the earth" (Isa. 2:19, 21); and not only an earthquake, but the shaking of heaven too: "I will make the heavens to tremble, and the earth shall be shaken out of its place, in the wrath of Yahweh of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger" (Isa. 13:13). In similar language the prophet Haggai conveys an oracle of assurance to Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest196 at the dedication of the Second Temple (516 B.C.): "Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says Yahweh of hosts" (Hag. 2:6f.). In their context these words declare God's purpose, in the day when _link_ he rises _link_ in vindication of his cause, to put down Gentile dominion, to exalt the throne of David, and to make Jerusalem and its temple the center of worship and allegiance for all nations.197 Our author interprets them of the end of the present world-order; the picture is similar to that in the Apocalypse, where earth and heaven flee away from the face of the Judge on the great throne, to be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 20:11; 21:1).198
27-29 When, in accordance with the divine promise, this cosmic convulsion takes place-when (in Dryden's words)
In the current debate whether the created world200 was eternal or not our author stands right within the Hebrew tradition. He has already201 quoted with approval the passage in Ps. 102:25ff. which emphasizes the transitoriness of all created things:
Philo tries, rather awkwardly, to mediate between the biblical doctrine and the Platonic doctrine of the eternity of the world;202 but our author is quite forthright. Earlier he has emphasized the transitoriness of the world in order to set in contrast the eternity of the Son of God; now he emphasizes it again in order to set in contrast the eternity of that new order into which the Son of God has brought his people.
At the same time, such sacrificial worship must be offered with a due sense of the majesty and holiness of the God with whom we have to do: not only thankfulness, but humble reverence and awe must mark his people's approach to him; "for our God is a consuming fire."204 He who descended on Mount Sinai in fire and spoke to his people from the midst of that fire still consumes in the white heat of his purity everything that is unworthy of himself.205 On Isa. 33:14 George Adam Smith wrote:
To Isaiah life was so penetrated by the active justice of God, that he described it as bathed in fire, as blown through with fire. Righteousness was no mere doctrine to this prophet: it was the most real thing in history; it was the presence which pervaded and explained all phenomena. We shall understand the difference between Isaiah and his people if we have ever for our eyes' sake looked at a great conflagration through a coloured glass which allowed us to see the solid materialsstone, wood, and iron-but prevented us from seeing the flames and shimmering heat. To look thus is to see pillars, lintels, and cross-beams, twist and fall, crumble and fade; but how inexplicable the process seems! Take away the glass, and everything is clear. The fiery element is filling all the interstices that were blank to us before, and beating upon the solid material. The heat becomes visible, shimmering even where there is no flame. Just so had it been with the sinners in Judah these forty years.... Isaiah alone faced life with open vision, which filled up for him the interstices of experience and gave terrible explanation to fate. It was a vision that nearly scorched the eyes out of him. Life as he saw it was steeped in flame-the glowing righteousness of God. Jerusalem was full of the spirit of justice, the spirit of burning. The light of Israel is for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame. 206 ... So Isaiah saw life, and flashed it on his countrymen. At last the glass fell from their eyes also, and they cried aloud, Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ?207
It is an aspect of the character of God as revealed in the Bible that plays little part in much present-day thinking about him; but if we are to be completely "honest to God," we dare not ignore it. Reverence and awe before his holiness are not incompatible with grateful trust and love in response to his mercy.
HEBREWS 13