The Race Leads to a Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken

“Cloud” is nephos, a massed crowd, a Greek idiom as old as Homer’s “cloud of foot soldiers”. “Weight” is onkos, bulk, the kind a runner trains off or strips away. “Easily beset” is euperistatos, a word found in no earlier Greek writing; guesses range from “clinging” to “easily surrounding”, and one early papyrus reads “easily distracting”. “Race” is agon, a contest.

“Author” is archegos, the word rendered “captain” in 2:10, and “finisher” is teleiotes, not found in any earlier Greek text. “Our” is supplied; the Greek says “the faith”. “For the joy” uses anti, which can mean “for the sake of” or “instead of”, and both readings have long defenders. “Is set down” is a perfect tense: he sat, and remains seated.

“Consider” is analogizomai, to reckon up or compare, found only here in the New Testament. “Contradiction” is antilogia, hostile speech, the word the Greek Old Testament uses for Meribah, “the water of strife” (Numbers 20:13). “Wearied” and “faint” were both used by Greek writers of runners who give out after crossing the line.

The picture shifts from the track to a bout: “striving against” is antagonizomai, to fight an opponent, and sin is now the one in the ring. “Resisted” is antikathistemi, to stand in line against, a soldier’s verb. “Unto blood” is where a contest ends in wounds or death.

The opening may be a question, “Have ye forgotten?” “Speaketh” is present tense: Proverbs is still talking to them. “Exhortation” is paraklesis, the word the letter uses for itself in 13:22, “the word of exhortation”. “Faint” repeats the verb of verse 3, which is why the proverb was chosen.

The Hebrew of Proverbs 3:12 reads “even as a father the son in whom he delighteth”. The Greek translators read the same consonants as a verb meaning “causes pain”, which gave “scourgeth every son whom he receiveth”, and Hebrews quotes that Greek. Both forms end on a father’s acceptance of a son.

“Chastening” is paideia, the ordinary Greek word for a child’s education and upbringing, the root of “pedagogy”. It covers training as much as punishment. The first clause can be read as a command, “Endure for the sake of discipline”, as well as the King James conditional.

“Bastards” is nothoi. Under Greek and Roman law an illegitimate son had no share in the inheritance, and a father had little reason to invest in his training. “Partakers” is metochoi, the word of 3:1 and 3:14, partners in the heavenly calling and in Christ.

“Father of spirits” recalls Numbers 16:22 and 27:16, “the God of the spirits of all flesh”, a title set against “fathers of our flesh”. “Gave them reverence” is entrepo, to turn toward in respect, the verb of the vineyard parable, “They will reverence my son” (Mark 12:6). “And live” makes submission the path to life.

“For a few days” means the short span of childhood. “After their own pleasure” is “as seemed good to them”, their best judgment, which could be wrong. “Holiness” here is hagiotes, God’s own quality of being holy, a rare noun; the discipline is aimed at sharing in what God is.

“Exercised” is gymnazo, to train, from the gymnasium where athletes trained naked; the same verb described senses trained by use in 5:14. The fruit is called “peaceable”, the rest that follows the bout, and it grows “afterward”, a word the verse sets against “for the present”.

The words are from Isaiah 35:3, “Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees”, spoken to exiles facing a desert road home, where 35:8 promises a highway. “Lift up” is anorthoo, to straighten again, a cousin of the “reformation”, diorthosis, of 9:10.

“Make straight paths for your feet” is Proverbs 4:26 in its Greek form. “Be turned out of the way” is ektrepo, which Greek medical writers used of a joint put out of place. The contrast then fits exactly: the lame limb is either dislocated or healed.

“Follow” is dioko, to pursue or chase, the verb of Psalm 34:14, “seek peace, and pursue it”. The command pairs peace “with all men” and holiness, two things that can pull against each other. Without holiness no one sees the Lord, who at Sinai could not be looked at.

“Looking diligently” is episkopeo, to oversee, the root of episkopos, bishop; here the oversight belongs to the whole congregation. “Fail of” is hystereo, to come short or lag behind, the verb of 4:1, where some “come short” of the promised rest.

“Profane” is bebelos, what may be trodden by anyone, unconsecrated ground. The morsel was the red lentil stew of Genesis 25:34. Genesis never calls Esau a fornicator, though it notes his Hittite wives (26:34–35); later Jewish tradition painted him as sensual, and “as Esau” may belong to “profane” alone.

“Rejected” is apodokimazo, to fail the test, the word used of a coin or a stone found wanting. “Place of repentance” occurs in Wisdom 12:10, where God gives the Canaanites room to repent. In “sought it”, the pronoun is feminine and can point to the blessing or to repentance, both feminine nouns in Greek.

The oldest manuscripts do not have the word “mount”; they read “that which might be touched”. Sinai is never named in the passage. The fire, blackness and darkness come from Deuteronomy 4:11: “the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.” “Tempest” is thyella, a whirlwind.

The trumpet grew “louder and louder” (Exodus 19:19). “The voice of words” is Deuteronomy 4:12, “ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude”. “Intreated” is paraiteomai, to beg off, and the people’s request is Exodus 20:19, “let not God speak with us, lest we die.”

Exodus 19:13 ordered that a trespasser be stoned or shot “that there shall not an hand touch it”: even the executioners could not cross the line to seize the offender. The words “or thrust through with a dart” were added in later copies from Exodus, and the oldest manuscripts end at “stoned”.

Exodus records no such words from Moses at Sinai. “I exceedingly fear” matches the Greek of Deuteronomy 9:19, where Moses feared the LORD’s anger after the golden calf, and Stephen says Moses “trembled” at the bush (Acts 7:32). Hebrews gathers his fear into the scene at the mountain.

“Are come” is the same perfect-tense verb as verse 18, the priestly verb of approach, now completed. Sion was the Jebusite stronghold David took (2 Samuel 5:7). “Innumerable company” is myriasin, tens of thousands, the “ten thousands of saints” who attended the giving of the law in Deuteronomy 33:2.

“General assembly” is panegyris, a festal gathering such as the crowds at the national games, used only here in the New Testament. “Firstborn” is plural: every member holds the birthright Esau sold in verse 16, prototokia. “Written in heaven” is enrolment as a citizen; compare Luke 10:20.

Hebrews has called the covenant “new” with kainos (8:8, 9:15); here the word is neos, recent, freshly made. Jesus is named by his human name alone and last in the list, as if the whole procession leads to him. Genesis 4:10 had Abel’s blood crying from the ground for justice.

“Refuse” is paraiteomai, the verb translated “intreated” in verse 19. At Sinai the people begged off the voice; now they are told not to. Whether “him that spake on earth” means Moses or God speaking at Sinai is debated, and the contrast works either way: earth against heaven.

Exodus 19:18 says “the whole mount quaked greatly”. Haggai 2:6 was spoken to encourage the builders of the second temple, a house that looked “as nothing” beside Solomon’s (Haggai 2:3). Haggai lists heavens, earth, sea and dry land; Hebrews rearranges it to “not the earth only, but also heaven”, putting heaven last for weight.

“Removing” is metathesis, the noun used for the “change” of the law in 7:12 and Enoch’s “translation” in 11:5. The writer reads the single word “once” as final: one more shaking, not an endless series. “Things that are made” are created things, the whole order that can be moved.

“Receiving” is a present participle, a kingdom in the course of being received, as Daniel 7:18 has the saints “take the kingdom”. “Let us have grace” is the Greek idiom for giving thanks, echomen charin, as in “I thank Christ Jesus” in 1 Timothy 1:12. “Godly fear” adds deos, awe, a word found only here in the New Testament.

Deuteronomy 4:24 reads “the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” Hebrews changes “thy” to “our”, and ends the quotation on the fire. The burning mountain of verse 18 was set aside for Sion, but the fire itself belongs to the God of Sion too.