Faith Reaches Beyond Possession, Victory, and Even Death

“Substance” is hypostasis, the word of 1:3, the Son as “the express image of his person”, and of 3:14, “our confidence”. In business papyri of the period it can mean a title deed, a document that makes absent property yours now. “Evidence” is elenchos, proof that convicts. This is the only verse in the chapter that defines anything.

“The elders” are the people of old, not church officers. “Obtained a good report” is one passive verb, emartyrethesan, “were witnessed to”, built on martys, a witness. The same verb comes back in verses 4, 5 and 39, and in 12:1 these people become the “cloud of witnesses”.

The first entry in the roll of faith has no hero; the subject is “we”. “Worlds” is aionas, the ages, as in 1:2, and “framed” is the verb used of the body prepared in 10:5. The Jewish mother of 2 Maccabees 7:28 said something close, that God made heaven and earth “of things that were not”.

Genesis 4:4 never says why Abel’s gift was preferred; Hebrews supplies the reason, faith. “More excellent” is literally “more”, pleiona, a fuller offering. “Yet speaketh” reaches back to the blood that cried from the ground (Genesis 4:10), and forward to 12:24, where Christ’s blood “speaketh better things than that of Abel”.

Genesis 5:24 in Hebrew says Enoch “walked with God” and “was not”. The Greek Old Testament renders these as “pleased God” and “was not found”, and Hebrews quotes that Greek. “Translated” is metatithemi, to move from one place to another; the verb and its noun occur three times in this one verse.

The reasoning runs backwards from Enoch: Scripture says he pleased God, and pleasing God requires faith, so Enoch had it. “Cometh to God” is the priestly verb of approach from 10:22. The faith named has two parts, that God exists and that he rewards those who “diligently seek”, ekzeteo, seek out.

“Warned of God” is chrematizo, to receive an oracle, the verb used of Moses in 8:5, “admonished of God”. “Moved with fear” is eulabeomai, reverent caution. Genesis 6:9 makes Noah the first person in Scripture called righteous, and Hebrews calls him the first heir of that righteousness.

The participle “when he was called” is present tense in Greek, suggesting he obeyed while the call was still sounding. Genesis 12:1 had said only “unto a land that I will shew thee”. “Inheritance” is a word for property handed down, which Abraham never held beyond one burial cave.

“Sojourned” is paroikeo, to live as a resident foreigner, the root from which the English “parish” descends. The three generations did overlap: Abraham was a hundred at Isaac’s birth, Isaac sixty at Jacob’s, and Abraham died at a hundred and seventy five, when Jacob was fifteen.

Tents have pegs, not foundations. “Builder” is technites, a craftsman, and “maker” is demiourgos, a public builder, the word Plato used for the maker of the world; it appears nowhere else in the New Testament. The Book of Hebrews calls God the architect of a city before it calls him its giver.

Genesis 18:12 records Sarah laughing at the promise; Hebrews passes over the laugh and credits her faith. The phrase “to conceive seed” is katabole spermatos, normally used of a father’s part in begetting, so many read Abraham as the subject and Sara as “with Sara herself”, an old and live question of grammar.

“As good as dead” is nenekromenos, the word Paul uses of Abraham’s body in Romans 4:19. The two images come from two different promises, stars from Genesis 15:5 and the sand of the sea shore from Genesis 22:17, spoken after the sacrifice on Moriah.

The formula changes: not “by faith” but “in faith”, kata pistin, according to faith, for people who died without the thing. “Embraced” is aspazomai, to greet, as a traveller waves to a city seen across a valley. Abraham told the Hittites, “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you” (Genesis 23:4).

“Country” is patris, fatherland, the land of one’s fathers. The irony is plain once said: the fatherland they sought was not the place their fathers came from. “Declare plainly” is emphanizo, to make visible; their words showed where their hearts were headed.

The road back was open. Abraham made his servant swear not to take Isaac back to Mesopotamia (Genesis 24:6–8), and Jacob did go back to Haran and stayed twenty years (Genesis 31:41), then came away again. “Mindful” is mnemoneuo, to keep thinking of.

“Desire” is oregomai, to stretch out for. God named himself “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” at the bush (Exodus 3:6), long after all three were buried, attaching his own name to three nomads who died owning a grave.

“Tried” is the testing of Genesis 22:1, where the King James says “God did tempt Abraham”. The Greek has two tenses: “offered up” first in the perfect, as a thing done, then in the imperfect, “was offering up”, an act begun and stopped by the angel’s call.

The quotation is Genesis 21:12, spoken on the day Hagar and Ishmael were sent away. The promise that required Abraham to let one son go was attached to the very son he is now told to give up, which is where the whole trial bites.

“Accounting” is logizomai, to reckon or calculate. Genesis 22:5 had already let the reckoning show: Abraham told the young men “I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you”, the last verb plural. “In a figure” is en parabole, the word of 9:9.

Genesis 27 is a scene of deception, and Isaac “trembled very exceedingly” when he found it out, yet he refused to take the blessing back. Both sons were blessed with futures, Esau’s including the day he would “break his yoke” (27:40). Jacob is named first, though Esau was the elder.

Hebrews passes over Jacob’s blessing of all twelve sons and chooses the crossed hands over Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48). The staff comes from the Greek of Genesis 47:31. Hebrew was written without vowels, and mth read as mittah is “bed”, as the King James has there, while matteh is “staff”.

“When he died” is teleutao, to reach one’s end. Joseph made the brothers swear in Genesis 50:25; Moses took the bones out of Egypt (Exodus 13:19); Joshua 24:32 buried them at Shechem, in the plot Jacob had bought. The instruction took about four centuries to carry out.

Exodus 2:2 says the mother hid him; the Greek Old Testament has the plural, and Hebrews follows it with “parents”. “Proper” is asteios, fine or handsome, the word Stephen uses in Acts 7:20, “exceeding fair”. The king’s commandment was Exodus 1:22, every son thrown into the river.

“When he was come to years” is literally “having become great”, the phrase of Exodus 2:11 in its Greek form; Stephen puts him at forty (Acts 7:23). Exodus 2:10 says “he became her son”. “Refused” is arneomai, to deny or disown, a word of renunciation.

“Suffer affliction with” is one compound verb, synkakoucheomai, to be ill-treated along with others, found nowhere else in the New Testament. “For a season” is proskairos, temporary, the word Paul sets against the eternal in 2 Corinthians 4:18: “the things which are seen are temporal”.

Psalm 89:50–51 speaks of “the reproach of thy servants” with which enemies reproached “the footsteps of thine anointed”, in Greek “of thy christ”, and Hebrews borrows that pairing of reproach and the anointed. “Had respect unto” is apoblepo, to look away from everything else toward one thing.

“Endured” is kartereo, to hold out, found only here in the New Testament. Exodus 33:20 said no man could see God and live, and Moses is described as enduring “as seeing” the invisible: faith here borrows the language of sight for what 11:1 called “things not seen”.

“Kept” is a perfect tense, pepoieken, he instituted the passover and it still stands. “He that destroyed” is the destroyer of Exodus 12:23, who passes over the doors marked with blood. The Greek verb “touch” is the one used in 12:20 of the beast that touches the mountain.

“Assaying” means making trial: the Egyptians attempted exactly the same crossing and it drowned them. The difference between the two companies on the sea bed is not in the act but in the faith. “Drowned” is katapino, to swallow down, as Exodus 15:12 sings, “the earth swallowed them”.

No person is the subject of the sentence; the walls fall. Israel went round the city once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh (Joshua 6:14–15), thirteen circuits in all, and no weapon is mentioned until the walls are already down.

“Believed not” is apeitheo, to be disobedient, the word used in 3:18 of Israel in the wilderness. The label implies Jericho had heard enough to respond, and Rahab says so in Joshua 2:10–11. James 2:25 cites the same woman for her works; Hebrews cites her for her faith.

“The time would fail me” was a stock phrase of Greek orators breaking off a list. The names come in pairs, each pair out of order: Gideon before Barak, Samson before Jephthah, David before Samuel. Gedeon and Jephthae are the Greek spellings of the Hebrew names.

“Wrought righteousness” can mean administered justice, as Samuel and David did as judges and kings. The lions recall Daniel 6:22, though Samson and David each killed a lion by hand (Judges 14:6, 1 Samuel 17:34–35). “Subdued” is katagonizomai, to overcome in a contest.

The fire is the furnace of Daniel 3. “Armies” is parembole, a camp or encampment, the same word as “without the camp” in 13:11 and 13:13. “Aliens” means foreigners, allotrioi, and the phrase recalls the Maccabean wars as well as the judges.

The widow of Zarephath and the Shunammite received sons back (1 Kings 17:22–23, 2 Kings 4:36). “Tortured” is tympanizo, to be stretched on the tympanon, a drum-shaped rack. 2 Maccabees 6–7 tells of Eleazar and of seven brothers who refused release, one saying God “shall raise us up” (7:9).

The mockings match the seven brothers of 2 Maccabees 7:7–10. Bonds and imprisonment fit Jeremiah, put in the stocks and later in the dungeon (Jeremiah 20:2, 37:15), and the prophet Micaiah, fed “bread of affliction” in prison (1 Kings 22:27).

Zechariah son of Jehoiada was stoned in the temple court (2 Chronicles 24:21). “Were tempted” sits oddly among deaths, and many scholars suspect an early copying slip for a similar Greek word meaning “were burned”. “Sheepskins” is melote, the word the Greek Old Testament uses for Elijah’s mantle.

The caves are specific: Obadiah hid a hundred prophets by fifty in a cave (1 Kings 18:4), Elijah lodged in one at Horeb (1 Kings 19:9), and Jews who kept the sabbath fled to caves under Antiochus (2 Maccabees 6:11). “Dens” are holes in the ground, not animal lairs.

“Good report” returns to the verb of verse 2 and closes the chapter’s frame. “Promise” is singular here, while verse 33 said they “obtained promises”, plural. Many individual promises were kept in their lifetimes; the one promise the chapter is about was not.

“Provided” is problepo, to see beforehand, the idea behind the English “providence”. The chapter ends on “perfect”, teleioo, the letter’s constant verb, and makes the completion of Abel, Abraham and the rest wait for the believers who hear this letter.