Hebrews 3

CHAPTER III

The Sharp Warning: Harden not Your Hearts, chapter 3

Consider Jesus in the Light of Moses, 3:1–6.

Hebrews 3:1

1 This is the preamble which resembles that found in 2:5–8. Moses is introduced because v. 7–19 cite the terrible unbelief that occurred on the journey through the desert under Moses. Let this story find no repetition under Jesus! We should not think that Jesus is put in contrast with Moses so that the readers are warned to forsake Moses for Jesus. They are paralleled—both Moses and Jesus are faithful. As Israel should have been faithful to Moses, so the readers should now be faithful to Jesus. In fact, the readers have a greater call to faithfulness than the unfaithful Israelites had as far as Moses was concerned because here is one greater than Moses. The two are alike, yet when they are paralleled, the greatness of Jesus must be kept in mind.

Verses 1–6 are thus important and necessary for a proper understanding of what follows. The placing of the two characters in juxtaposition, as is done here, is masterly indeed. The readers were tempted to forsake Jesus for Moses, but by doing this they would, despite their reverting to Moses, only repeat what the Israelites had done under Moses, repeat it in a way that is still worse because Jesus is greater than Moses. The writer makes the very inclination to turn back to Moses and to the old Judaism the basis of his warning not to forsake Jesus. This desire to turn from Jesus to Moses would be no more a turning back to Moses than was the action of the ancient Israelites, who had Moses and yet did not prove faithful to him.

If the writer had placed Moses in opposition to Jesus he would have aroused the antagonism of his readers. He proceeds as Jesus does in John 5:45–47. Yet, by being true to the facts when he places Jesus and Moses side by side and asks his readers to be faithful to both, the writer is able to bring out the fact that Jesus is far greater than Moses. And so both the similarity between the two and the fact that Jesus is the greater by far lend their powerful force to the warning appeal.

We now see why the appeal is ushered in by the preamble, v. 1–6, and why this opens with the call to consider thoroughly (κατανοέω) the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus. Hence, holy brethren, sharers of a heavenly calling, consider thoroughly the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus, as being faithful to him who made him (what he is) even as also Moses (was faithful) in his whole house.

Ὅθεν (see 2:17) refers back to 2:5–18; the careful consideration is to result from the previous presentation. The readers are directly addressed for the first time in order the more effectively to urge them to do what is asked. The common address “brethren” is enhanced by “holy”; ἅγιοι is often used as a designation for Christians: “saints.” Here a brother is urging brothers. We do not think that the word alludes to “brothers” that occurs in 2:11, etc., and 2:17, where it is used with reference to Jesus; it is the standard address used when one Christian speaks to others. “Holy” adds the thought that they “have been sanctified by the sanctifier, Jesus” (2:11), their High Priest, who made expiation for them (2:17); in the present connection this adjective is the richer in meaning.

A second address: “sharers of a heavenly calling,” adds still more in view of the following warning. They share alike in the calling they have received, one that is “heavenly,” that emanates from God (1 Cor. 1:2; Phil. 3:14). There is no need to put more into the adjective as some do. In the epistles κλῆσις always refers to the successful and accepted call. That thought is emphasized by the use of “sharers.” Being such, the readers will certainly do what is asked of them since it belongs to their heavenly calling, namely “consider thoroughly (perfective κατά in the verb) the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus.” “Apostle” is one who is commissioned as Jesus himself commissioned the Twelve and Paul. So God sent Jesus on his mission.

Since it is here placed beside “High Priest,” “Apostle” refers to 1:2: God spoke to us in the person of his Son whom he sent to be a Prophet like unto Moses (Deut. 18:15, 18). Jesus is at the same time our “High Priest” as already explained in 2:17. This term places Jesus above Moses who is never called a high priest.

The two designations of Jesus have but one article. The genitive “of our confession” is subjective: we confess Jesus as the Apostle and High Priest who has been provided for our salvation by God; it cannot be objective: the Apostle and High Priest who accepts our confession and brings it to him who has commissioned him. Our whole confession of Jesus is referred to and not some early, fixed formula of confession in which these designations for Jesus were employed. “Jesus” is added in order to bring out more fully his work for us on earth, and both titles speak of Jesus in his great office.

Hebrews 3:2

2 Πιστὸνὄντα is predicative and states precisely what the readers are to consider well when they are thinking about Jesus whom they confess as God’s supreme Apostle and High Priest. It is not well to translate the participle as a relative clause: “who was faithful,” etc.; we render “as being faithful,” for his being faithful is the point to be considered. What a blessing for us, this faithfulness of Jesus! If Jesus had not been faithful, trustworthy, reliable in his great office despite all the suffering this involved (2:9–18), what would our condition be? Shall we lose all that his faithfulness has bestowed on us by giving up our faithfulness, our heavenly call, our confession of him?

Jesus is presented as our example, but only on the basis of his High-priestly expiation (2:17). Only those who are cleansed by his expiation can be faithful to God and to him. Faithfulness in us means above all faith in him as our Apostle and High Priest, unwavering and true confession of him as such. Jesus cannot be merely a moral example. The wording is again wonderful, for beside Jesus as our Apostle and High Priest are placed our heavenly calling (from God to us) and our confession (our response to God)—he in his saving office, we in our calling as saved—“faithful” being the great point now to be considered.

“As faithful to him who made him” means: God made Jesus the Apostle and High Priest, made him what we confess him to be. We may appeal to 1 Sam. 12:6 for this use of made (ποιεῖν) but not overlook Acts 2:36: “God made him both Lord and Christ (ἐποίησε), this Jesus whom you on your part did crucify.” It is unfair to criticize the Greek fathers who understand these words in this way and to claim that they did it only in order to deprive the Arians of one of their proof passages against the deity of Jesus. Those Greek fathers were right, witness Acts 2:36. God “made” also the human nature of Jesus, wherefore Jesus also called him “my God”; but what are Arians able to make of this since they must show that Jesus did not possess the deity of the divine nature? The interpretation that God made “the historical personality of Jesus, i. e., not only created it but equipped and commissioned it as the task required for the accomplishment of which it was destined” (Riggenbach) is unclear and does not accept the simple meaning of the words.

Moses is placed alongside of Jesus, the Moses of whom these Jewish Christians think so highly, from whom also the writer detracts nothing: “even also as Moses (was faithful) in his whole house,” meaning Israel. This is plainly a reference to Num. 12:7; it is almost a quotation. See the repetition of it below in v. 5. Some construe the ἐν phrase with πιστός, which would then mean that Jesus was faithful in his house (or in God’s house). But such a construction does not follow the Greek order of the words. The use of the word “whole” is challenged, in part on textual grounds, but especially because no reason for its introduction is said to exist.

But Num. 12:7 has “whole.” The word is decidedly in place here, in v. 5, as well as in Numbers. In all three passages it states that Moses was faithful, not merely in a part of Israel, but in his management of the whole of it. Besides all this, some overlook the fact that Moses is an individual “in” the house while in marked difference to him Jesus is “over” the house (v. 6).

Here, then, are two individuals who are “faithful” in their high and most difficult offices; the one is even “the Apostle and High Priest” whom we confess. Dare we be faithless and recreant in our calling and our confession?

Hebrews 3:3

3 This application is as yet only implied, for the readers are left to ask why Jesus’ faithfulness is made thus prominent. Before the answer is offered the point regarding Moses is more fully explained. While he and Jesus are examples in faithfulness, not he but Jesus is the greater. It may well be possible that the explanation is needed because the Jews commonly placed Moses higher than even the angels. For this One has been counted as worthy of more glory than (παρά in comparison) Moses by so much as he who constructed it has more honor than the house (he constructed).

“For” does not indicate why the readers are to consider Jesus but elucidates what lies in the great double title of Jesus mentioned in v. 1, and what must be noted in an adequate consideration of the faithfulness he exhibited as compared with the faithfulness of Moses. The faithfulness of Moses is not less than that of Jesus, nor was Moses faulty in some way, nor did he neglect some part of his house and not attend to the whole of it. No; the relation of Moses to the house was less than the relation of Jesus to that house even as Jesus alone can be termed “the Apostle and High Priest of our confession,” which it is impossible to predicate of Moses.

The writer points out what lies in the phrase that is used in Num. 12:7: “in my whole house.” God, who made Jesus the Apostle, etc., “counted him worthy of more glory than Moses” (2:9: “having crowned him with glory and honor,” in which we are to share). Of how much more glory? As much more honor as belongs to him who constructed the house than belongs to the house he has constructed. The verb has its advanced meaning; it does not mean “to furnish” the house with furniture and servants but “to construct,” to build and also to furnish it completely (compare 11:7). One praises a grand house, yet praises far more him who planned and erected it (Ps. 19:1).

It is debated whether the relative clause is abstract and general or the spiritual house of God is referred to. We cannot press an “either—or” in this way; here the two go together, both are in the mind of the writer. “More than the house” has the genitive after the comparative. “He who constructed it” = Jesus. We should not think of two houses, the Old Testament and the New Testament house; these are but one house that is composed of God’s spiritual people. Note 11:26 where it is stated that Moses preferred “the reproach for Christ” as being a greater treasure than all the riches of Egypt. Note also John 8:56, 58. The power and the effect of the incarnation, the suffering, the death, the expiation (2:17), and the glorification of Jesus extend as far back as Adam just as they extend forward to the last day.

The relative clause includes far more than Moses. He was not “the house”; the true Israel was that, the Christian believers are that. Moses was only “in” this house, a part of it, although, to be sure, an important part. Glory and honor to him accordingly, but not as great as that of Jesus who built the whole house and made also Moses what he was in this house.

Hebrews 3:4

4 It is correct to judge glory and honor in this way from the relation of the persons to the house; even the glory and honor due to God are rightly judged in this way. For every house is constructed by someone (present tense in a general proposition) who, compared with anyone who is otherwise connected with the house, deserves the superior honor. This justifies the judgment expressed in v. 3a regarding Jesus and Moses. Although they were alike faithful they yet differ greatly in this other respect. Moreover, he who constructed everything (is) God. His being worthy of glory and honor is according. This statement seals the matter, for if even God is in this way rightly judged as to glory and honor, no one can possibly object when Jesus is honored by God above Moses.

If we translate δέ with adversative “but” (our versions, commentators) we encounter difficulty. It becomes difficult to find an acceptable meaning for the words. Riggenbach contents himself with the thought that, since God has constructed everything, it will depend on God as to what honor others receive.

Nor can we accept the idea that πάντα, “everything,” includes the position which God gave to Jesus and to Moses regarding the house. Rendall says that Jesus was “the perfect representative of God” who constructed everything, Dods adds that Jesus is the Son, the idea being that Jesus thus obtained the more honor. This is but a variation of the idea of the early commentators that God in reality built the house, i. e., Jesus in his deity. An issue is made of Θεός as though this cannot be, or at least is not, the predicate. But what is gained by making it the subject? This confusion results when δέ is translated “but.”

Hebrews 3:5

5 After the two explanations with γάρ “and” continues the thought of faithfulness. And Moses (is) faithful in his whole house as a servant in regard to testimony of the things that were to be spoken, while Christ (is faithful) as Son over his house, whose house are we ourselves if we hold fast as firm to the end the assurance and the boast of the hope.

Μέν and δέ balance the two statements, on the one hand Moses, on the other hand Christ. It is the relation to the house, as already explained, that causes the difference in regard to glory and honor where faithfulness is equal. Once more then: “Moses—faithful in his whole house” (v. 2; Numbers 12:7), yet we now have the significant addition: “as a servant” and no more. We are even told what his service was by an allusion to Num. 12:8: “with him will I speak mouth to mouth” so that he shall then tell the people. This is put into the condensed phrase: as servant εἰςμαρτύριοντῶνλαληθησομένων, future passive participle: that he may testify to the people the things God wants to have spoken to them from time to time, i. e., a servant to act as God’s mouthpiece whenever God desired to speak.

This function Moses performed faithfully; his glory-was according. Thus he was in the house, Θεράπων is frequently used in the Old Testament as a designation of Moses (Hebrew ’ebed): Diener, a free servant who serves of his own accord and so carries out the wishes of his employer; it is in contrast with δοῦλος, “slave,” who dare have no will of his own. In v. 5 and 6 the copula is absent, which means that nothing depends on it or on its tense. We, therefore, do not introduce it.

Hebrews 3:6

6 Now “Christ.” The very change from “Jesus” marks his high office and dignity especially in this epistle where the simple “Jesus” is regularly used. Not only the copula is omitted, also πιστός is to be understood. “Christ—(faithful) as Son over his house”—not in—the opposite of “servant.” “Over his house” is modifier enough of “Son” (just as the εἰς phrase modifies θεράπων: “servant for,” etc.); there is no need to tell what this Son’s functions are, he has the whole house under him. What about the Father? John 17:10 answers; also John 16:15; compare Luke 16:31. We are now told outright: “whose house are we” (the pronoun is emphatic), the New Testament Church which has followed the Old Testament Church, into which not Jewish physical birth places us but the “heavenly call” (v. 1). The fact that Jesus is over this house of his because he constructed it, and that his glory and honor are according, has already been mentioned.

Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Delitzsch, Westcott, and others interpret the εἰς phrase in v. 5 as follows: “for a testimony of the things which should be spoken by God through the prophets and finally through Christ,” i. e., Moses testified what these others should afterward speak. Our versions seem, to have the same thought in mind. Yet the allusion to Num. 12:8 is rather strong, especially also the future tense of λαλεῖν: “With him I will speak mouth to mouth,” etc. God is the speaker in the passive participle λαληθησομένων and not the prophets that were to come and Jesus. Moses was the faithful transmitter of God’s words to Israel; his “testimony” as to what God said to him at any time was “faithful” and true.

When the writer says, “We are Christ’s house,” he adds significantly we “if we hold fast as firm to the end the assurance and the boast of the hope.” While he softens the force of these words by including himself and by using ἐάν, a condition of expectancy, this addition, nevertheless, indicates the state of his readers who had begun to waver and had thus caused the writing of this letter. It asks the readers: “Will you thus hold fast?” It calls on them to do so. The aorist subjunctive is properly used: κατάσχωμεν, “hold fast definitely.” He likewise uses two nouns, each with its article because they differ in gender. The first is subjective: τὴνπαρρησίαν, which does not mean “the boldness” (R. V.) but more correctly “the confidence” (A. V.), the advanced meaning of this word (M.-M. 497; C.-K. 451); when one feels bold and has no timidity in speaking to another he is perfectly confident and assured.

The second term, τὸκαύχημα, means neither “the rejoicing” (A. V.) nor “the glorying” (R. V.), which are activities, but “the cause of boasting,” the thing about which one boasts, in this sense “the boast.” Paul loves this word. It embraces all that we have in Christ as something of which we love to speak as our highest, richest possession so that it sounds as if we made it our boast. “Of the hope” is likewise objective, and since παρρησία never appears with a genitive, we connect “of the hope” only with “the boast” even as both are objective: the great thing for which we hope is the thing that forms our boast.

This should not be overlooked, and we should not say that, because “assurance” is subjective, its companion term must also be subjective. If that were the case, we should undoubtedly have not καύχημα but καύχησις, the activity of “boasting.” Then, however, this holding fast in firmness to the end would cling only to something that is subjective. Yes, we must hold fast our subjective assurance but equally the objective ground and basis on which it rests, namely Christ, the Author of our salvation (2:10), the Apostle and High Priest whom we confess (3:1), all that we have in him, the expiation (2:17), etc., all that forms and ever should form the objective content of our boast and our hope.

Our “hope” is the glory of which we are assured: God will bring “many sons to glory” (2:10), us among them. Jesus has already been crowned with “glory and honor” (2:9). He is the heir (1:2), and we are “about to inherit salvation” (1:14) as his co-heirs (Rom. 8:17). By his incarnation he joined us and made us “his brothers” (2:11–13), by his death and expiation he freed us from the devil, the might of death, the fear of death, and brings us the help we need in temptation (2:17, 18) and thus fills us with the assurance and boast of hope and glory that await us at the τέλος or end.

It is not enough to emphasize only our subjective holding fast; the objective realities must always be added even as these alone inspire us to cling fast subjectively. Many people feel firmly confident and assured and do a lot of hoping in their hearts but lack the actual divine realities; an awful disappointment awaits them in the end. Not so we; we have the realities if only, as one should expect (ἐάν), we hold them fast. “As firm” is the predicative adjective which modifies both nouns. The first is feminine, the second is neuter, so the adjective is feminine since this gender prevails over the neuter, and since, if it were made neuter, the adjective would appear to belong only to the second noun.

This “if” clause is an apt transition to the warning that follows, of which this entire paragraph (v. 1–6) is only the preamble. Indeed, if we thoroughly consider Jesus in his faithfulness, in the proper comparison with faithful Moses, we shall ever keep from the faithlessness which destroyed the Israelites in the very time of Moses.

Harden not Your Hearts! v. 7–14.

Hebrews 3:7

7 The unbelief and the hardening of the whole people of Israel during the forty years of their journey in the wilderness, not only as these are recorded by Moses but also as they are depicted anew by David in Ps. 95:7–11, are a mighty effective warning for us even today. They must have been an even more effective warning for the first readers of this epistle. They were of Jewish blood; are they going to repeat what happened to their ancestors in the desert? Faithful Moses has been placed before them beside faithful Jesus. Will they be faithful in their “heavenly calling” (v. 1) as Jesus and Moses were, or will they now prove faithless? This is what happened to their ancestors under Moses. Are they going to repeat this under Jesus who is so much greater than Moses?

They think of turning from Jesus to Moses. But Moses and Jesus belong together; both were equally faithful, Moses in the house as a servant, Jesus as the Son over the house (v. 5, 6). It is impossible to become faithless to the faithful Jesus who is the Son over the house without becoming equally faithless to Moses who is the servant in the house even as the house is one. Moses would be the first to accuse them (John 5:45–47). All this lies in the use of this quotation, and it is brought to bear upon the readers with corresponding effect.

It is best to construe διό … βλέπετε (v. 12) and to regard the καθώς clause with its quotation as subordinate, a construction which the A. V. indicates by the use of a parenthesis. The writer does not adopt the language of the psalm as stating his own thought, for in v. 10 God speaks, and the writer cannot adopt the words of God as being spoken by himself. Therefore, even as speaks the Holy Spirit:

Today if you shall hear his voice,

Do not harden your hearts as in the embitterment,

On the day of the temptation in the wilderness,

Where your fathers tempted me in a testing

And saw my works for forty years.

Wherefore I was disgusted with this generation

And said: Always they err with the heart.

Moreover, they did not know my ways

So that I swore in my wrath:

They shall not enter into my rest!—see to it, brethren, etc.

“Even as speaks the Holy Spirit” is not a formula of quotation which introduces Scripture. It is not a formula at all as witness 9:8 and 10:15 where we have a different wording; in Acts 21:15 Agabus says, “These things says the Holy Spirit,” although he is not quoting Scripture. What David wrote about the old Israelites is attributed to the Holy Spirit as if the Spirit himself “says” it, still says it to us. David’s words (see 4:7) are the Holy Spirit’s words. This defines inspiration just as do Matt. 1:22; Heb. 10:15; 9:8; and many other statements. We do not talk about an “inspiration theory” but look at all these passages which present a clear fact: “the Holy Spirit says or declares” this and that which was written in the Old Testament.

The LXX is quoted with little change as being entirely sufficient for the writer’s purpose. The Hebrew of Ps. 95:7b expresses a strong wish: “Today if you would only hear his voice!” although the LXX and the A. V., like Hebrews, translate the words as a conditional clause. In either case the psalmist expects that the Lord God, to whom he asks his people to return as the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand, will again let these people hear his voice: “Today if you shall hear his voice,” etc. Ἐάν is never used to express a wish; it denotes expectancy. Hence “today” is placed emphatically forward. The period of grace is not yet closed.

When the genitive is used after ἀκούω, this case refers to the person who is heard; the accusative states what is heard. This difference holds good also in Acts 9:7; 22:7, 9; 26:14. Thus we have here: when you shall hear God speaking to you with his voice.

Hebrews 3:8

8 The subjunctive is used in negative commands with the aorist and not the imperative: “harden not your hearts.” The aorist is peremptory: “When God in his grace shall at any time still let you hear his voice, do not by any means make your hearts stiff like a dried, hard branch that will not bend and yield to God!” It may be the last time he will speak thus to you. “My spirit will not always strive with man,” Gen. 6:3. It is a serious mistake to think that God will go on offering his grace despite all our rejection so that we may yield when we please. “Too late! too late!” is written at various places in the history of the Jews. This psalm records one of these places: “as in the embitterment, on the day of the temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me in a testing.” We read the whole of this together.

The writer combines the accusative of the extent of time “for forty years” with the preceding clause whereas David has this phrase in the next clause: “for forty years was I disgusted,” etc. This is not an inexact quotation but is intentional and interpretative. Κατὰτὴνἡμέραν means: “all along the day of the temptation in the wilderness,” “day” denotes the whole forty years just as σήμερον, “today,” in v. 7 does not refer merely to one day, i. e., the day on which David wrote and sang this psalm, but to the time (whatever its length) in which God would yet speak to Israel in grace. That is why the LXX’s as well as our A. V.’s renderings of the psalm do not regard Massah and Meribah as proper names (Exod. 17:7). Even in the passage in Exodus the etymological meaning of the two terms is added: the one = “chiding or strife.”

The Greek of the psalm (LXX and Hebrews) is: παραπικρασμός, “embitterment” of the people, Wider-spenstigkeit, bitter rebellion (meribah); πειρασμός, “temptation,” Erprobung or testing (massah). To be sure, David thought of Exod. 17:1–7, an incident that occurred in the second year of the exodus from Egypt, and by no means only of Num. 14 and 20:2–5. David refers to Exod. 17, 1–7 much as does Stephen when he in Acts 7:37–43 combines the story of the golden calf with the idolatries of Israel during the entire “forty years in the wilderness” (v. 42).

During the entire forty years the hearts of the Israelites under faithful Moses (v. 5) were hard, unyielding, embittered against God because of the hardships of the wilderness, and tempted and tried out God the whole time of “the day of the tempting in the wilderness.”

Hebrews 3:9

9 We translate οὗ “where”; it is not “when” (A. V.); nor is it attracted from the dative: “wherewith” (i. e., “the temptation,” in attraction with the genitive of this word as its antecedent). “Where” = “in the desert.” There during those forty years, David says to the Israelites of his time, “your fathers tempted me (God) in a testing”; the phrase emphasizes the trying-out to which they subjected God while they were debating whether they should accept him or not.

“And saw my works for forty years” refers to all the miracles which God did for them plus all of God’s other manifestations in leading them. All these works the old Israelites “saw,” but despite all that their hearts remained hard.

Hebrews 3:10

10 “Wherefore I was disgusted with this generation” (it is more than “displeased,” R. V., or “grieved,” A. V.); one may even translate, “I abhorred.” Διό is used in place of καί in order to bring out more clearly the connection between the disgust and the sin; and instead of David’s “that generation,” which points away from his own, our writer, in quoting David, uses “this generation,” i. e., not David’s but the one to which David refers in this psalm. We quote in the same sensible way.

God expressed his disgust; he said: “Always they err with the heart,” meaning that their case is hopeless. The LXX, too, has “always” (like Acts 7:51), yet not in order to add to the Hebrew but in order to render its meaning properly: “A people of erring heart are they,” i. e., of one that is constantly erring. The emphasis is on “heart,” which in the Hebrew and in the Greek is not the seat merely of the feelings but of the mind and the will and thus of the real personality. Their wandering in error like stars out of their orbit is due to their wicked will (Matt. 23:37: “ye would not”). People who have hearts like that are, indeed, hopeless.

Δέ is not adversative “but”; it states the matter in a different way: “Moreover, they did not know my ways.” The verb used is γινώσκω. They knew God’s ways intellectually (οἶδα) but refused to know them as their own, cum affectu et effectu, refused to know them so as to walk in them. “My ways” are the ones which God had mapped out for them to follow; the Old Testament frequently uses derek, singular and plural, in this sense. Δέ thus makes plain from what the Israelites wandered away. Αὐτοί is emphatic: “they on their part,” over against “my” ways, which God, indeed “knows” (Ps. 1:6).

David is not quoting God in these two lines but is summing up all that God said of the Israelites at various times.

Hebrews 3:11

11 We regard ὡς as being consecutive (B.-P. 1431; R. 1000 wavers between “so” and “as”): “So that I swore in my wrath: They shall not enter into my rest!” This oath is found not only in Num. 14:21, etc.; v. 28, etc., for Num. 32:10–13 repeats it, and Deut. 1:34–36 records it anew; the psalmist summarizes. “In my wrath” is the inevitable reaction of God’s holiness and righteousness to sin and ungodliness when the efforts of his grace are exhausted; see further Rom. 1:18. The form of the oath is: “As truly as I live,” or, “As I live” (Num. 14:21, 28). God can swear by none that is higher than himself (Heb. 6:13). God’s oath is irrevocable because he never swears, as men so often do, either foolishly or without knowing to what he swears (as is done in the case of all oaths that are asked by lodges, Lev. 5:4). His oath and its irrevocableness are due to the exhaustion of his grace when judgment must follow. In oaths εἰ = the Hebrew ’im; it is only an apparent imitation of the Hebrew and is not un-Greek (R. 1024).

The rest into which those Israelites were not to enter was certainly that in the land of Canaan, but God’s oath cannot be restricted to disbarment from only this rest on the strength of Deut. 12:9–11 or of any other passage. Our epistle could then not have used this psalm, as it does, against a wicked heart of unbelief; David could then not have written this psalm in order to warn his generation against the same thing. The unbelief here described excludes not only from typical earthly blessings but equally from the rest in the heavenly Canaan. We are not left to conclude this for ourselves; 4:8–11 states this outright. Those hardened Israelites who were perishing in the wilderness did not after all enter into heaven; they were damned in unbelief as obdurate resistance of the Holy Spirit always damns (Acts 7:51).

The mention of the forty years (v. 9) has been connected with the situation of the readers of the epistle, with the fact that they had seen the work of the Messiah these forty years since his death. Some rabbis spoke of the forty years of the Messiah; but the first of these rabbis did not live before the beginning of the second century; our writer could not have alluded to a thought expressed by them. To a Christian “the days of the Messiah” might refer to those that Jesus spent on earth or to those after his Parousia but never to those between these two events, to say nothing of only the forty years from the ascension to the fall of Jerusalem. To assume that our epistle was written after the fall of Jerusalem is not warranted. If this assumption were true, the writer would have referred to that terrible judgment, yet there is nothing in this epistle that even faintly alludes to this catastrophe.

Our writer does the very thing that David did: he uses the unbelief and the judgment of the Israelites in the wilderness as a warning for the Jewish believers of his time. By using David’s psalm our writer is able to double the warning, for the psalm repeats Moses’ account. The effect must have been strong indeed for Christian Jews.

Hebrews 3:12

12 Therefore (v. 7) … see to it, brethren, perhaps there will be in someone of you a wicked heart of unbelief in apostatizing from the living God; yea, keep admonishing yourselves every day, as long as it is called today, lest someone of your number be hardened by means of the deceit of the sin, for we have become sharers of Christ if, indeed, we hold fast the beginning of the confidence firm to the end.

On the connection see v. 7, διό. “See to it, perhaps there will be,” has μή with the indicative after a verb of apprehension, not in the sense of “lest,” but para tactically in the sense of “perhaps” (Moulton, Ein leitung 304; also R. 1169). “Perhaps there will be” is a plain warning. “Brethren” indicates that the quotation is ended, that the writer is addressing the readers in his own person, and that the warning conies from a loving, fraternal heart. “In someone of you” aims to have not a single one lost, no matter who of the readers it may be.

“A wicked heart of unbelief in apostatizing from the living God” is plain language. That is the kind of heart the Israelites of the desert had, which brought on them the terrible oath, the kind of heart against which David warned his people in the psalm. The writer is expounding what is said of “the heart” in v. 10. The trouble of unbelief is always in the heart, the seat of the will. Both the adjective “wicked” and the stronger attributive genitive “of unbelief” characterize “heart.” Note well that “a heart of unbelief” is ever wicked, for no greater wickedness exists than unbelief, a fact which so many fail to perceive. “See to it” = watch over each other; it would be terrible if someone among you should have such a heart.

The ἐν clause defines the unbelief as to its making the heart so wicked; it states wherein the wickedness of the heart consists: “in apostatizing from the living God.” That is what ἀποστῆναι means; the noun is ἀποστασία, “apostasy” (see 2 Thess. 2:3). The aorist infinitive expresses actuality, definiteness. “Unbelief” is thus understood in the sense of once having believed in the living God and then having turned away from him. The writer will have more to say on this.

“The living God” is a current designation among Jews, yet it has lost nothing of its force. It is here not in contrast with dead idols, for none of these Christian Jews were in danger of becoming pagans and idol worshipers. The name refers to the true God who as a living God keeps his promises and executes his threats. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31). One may think that turning back to Judaism would not be apostasy from the living God; that is the opinion of modernists and their Unitarianism. But the writer calls that unbelief. See also Jesus’ word in John 17:3 also in 5:23. Whoever apostatizes from the incarnate Son as he is depicted in chapters one and two thereby apostatizes from God himself; after rejecting the Son, no man can hold to the Father, the living God, the Son being “his glory’s effulgence and his being’s impress.”

We may note that ἀπιστία is the opposite of πιστός which is used in v. 2, 5: “unfaith” and “faithful”—Jesus and Moses true and “faithful” to God in every respect in regard to the house (church)—an apostate member of that house faithless and casting away his faith in God. The Greek makes this contrast more effectively than the English which must use “faithful—unbelief.”

Hebrews 3:13

13 We do not find an adverse idea in ἀλλά, adverse either to “see to it” or to “perhaps there will be”; neither can be followed by “but admonish yourselves.” This is continuative ἀλλά, it is climacteric and not contradictory (R. 1185, etc.); we translate: “yea, keep on admonishing.” The watchful eye is to see whether there is “anyone”; the admonishing is to include “yourselves,” namely all. We do not regard “yourselves” as the reciprocal “one another,” for ἔντινι and ἑαυτούς, “in someone” and “your own selves,” are the proper balance. Κατά is distributive, and ἑκάστην means: “day by day” without exception; the phrase emphasizes the durative present imperative which is also the form of “see to it” in v. 12. “As long as it is called ‘today’” once more quotes the emphatic “today” that occurs in the psalm (v. 5) and thus means “the today,” not merely the present moment, but the still present grace; the article makes the adverb a noun. For the Israelites in the desert that today ended when God swore his oath of judgment; let the readers not compel the living God to repeat that oath in their case. Let them constantly admonish themselves.

Μή with the subjunctive expresses what is otherwise to be feared: “lest someone of your number be hardened by means of the deceit of the sin.” The expression is varied: “in someone of you” (v. 12), now τιςἐξὑμῶν, “someone from you,” we may say “of your number.” The point is not merely that no single sheep of the flock is to be lost but that no start may be made with “someone,” nobody knowing to what such a start may lead. The same verb is used here that was used in the psalm (v. 8), but it is now the passive. The following dative “deceit of the sin” can scarcely be the agent with the passive. This agent might be “the sin,” which the article makes definite as the power that is called “sin”; yet “the sin” should then be in the dative. “Deceit” expresses the means; the agent by whom someone may be hardened is ominously left unnamed.

Some have identified “the sin” with “unbelief” (v. 12); yet “unbelief” is itself the hardening of the heart. The means by which both are caused is “deceit.” We meet “sin” in 11:25 and especially in 12:1, 4, where its deceit also appears. “The sin” seems to mean the unwillingness to suffer for Christ’s sake, the desire to enjoy the pleasures of this life; the sin’s “deceit” is that forsaking Christ and returning to Judaism, it is not giving up God, but is the gain of escape from all the persecution and the dangers that are connected with faith in Christ. The details of this deceit are, of course, manifold. Each deceived individual has his own peculiar argument and plea to justify his folly.

Hebrews 3:14

14 The admonitions expressed in v. 12, 13 are strengthened: “for sharers of Christ have we become if we, indeed, hold fast the beginning of the confidence firm to the end.” The present connotation of the perfect γεγόναμεν prevails even as what one “has become” he is now. We need not debate as to what is meant when the writer and the readers are now said to be “sharers of Christ.” In v. 1 we have “sharers in a heavenly calling”; this calling joins us to Christ, he is the heir (1:2), we are “those about to inherit salvation” (1:14); or, since this verse vividly recalls 3:6, Christ over the house, we the house itself, we are, of course, ever to see to it and admonish ourselves that we may all continue in this blessed relation (v. 12, 13). This position of ours as sharers of Christ continues “if, indeed, we hold fast,” etc.; πέρ is attached to ἐάν in order to make it intensive (R. 1154). “Hold fast as firm to the end” repeats this wording from v. 6. The thing to hold fast is “the beginning of the confidence” which made us and still makes us sharers with Christ.

Ὑπόστασις = “confidence in which one stands fast as well in doing as in bearing, in acting as in suffering,” C.-K. 541. Schlatter’s Wagnis and other conceptions of this widely used word do not commend themselves. No genitive is added as is done in 11:1. The word ὑπόστασις seems to have been chosen here because it is the verbal opposite of the preceding τὸἀποστῆναι, the one being a firm, confident stand, the other a standing away from, forsaking, apostatizing. “The beginning of the confidence” refers merely to time and not to a start that needs development, a thought that is not touched here. The idea is that of the true and noble beginning and of an equal end. If the end truly matches the beginning, we shall then be what we are now. Βεβαίαν is predicative to τὴνἀρχήν: “the beginning … as firm.” The saddest thing in the world is to see a noble beginning made in the Christian faith and then to have this lost before the end arrives.

Fail not to Enter into God’s Rest!

Hebrews 3:15

15 In saying:

Today if you hear his voice

Do not harden your hearts in the embitterment,

who, pray, on having heard, made embitterment? Yea, did not all they who came out of Egypt through Moses? Moreover, with whom was he disgusted for forty years? Was it not with them who sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? Moreover, to whom did he swear that they should not enter into his rest but to them that disobeyed? And so we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Our versions attach this verse to the preceding clause, which makes it a weak appendix that is incongruous when we note the clash in tenses: hold fast definitely to the end (aorist) while it is being said (durative present). The view that the γάρ occurring in the first question of v. 16 prevents us from construing v. 15 with v. 16 is due to a misunderstanding of γάρ.

Nor do we divide the quotation in the middle so as to obtain: “while it is said, ‘Today if you shall hear his voice,’ do not harden,” etc.; for without the aid of our English quotation marks no one could surmise that the quotation is to be curtailed, and that the writer himself adds: “do not harden,” etc., (the identical words used in the psalm, v. 8) as his own. We translate as above. The absence of a connective marks a new line of thought.

In connection with the two lines quoted from the psalm a series of dramatical, rhetorical questions is asked, which drives home to the Jewish Christian readers the fact that the people with whom David’s psalm deals were Jews, obdurate unbelievers, all of whom perished miserably. Let the readers themselves answer these questions; the answers are self-evident. Do the readers want to join those wretched unbelievers? Ἐντῷ with the infinitive is the idiom Luke loves; γάρ is not “for” (our versions) but deductive: “who, then,” etc.; or: “who, pray (stop and think),” etc.

Hebrews 3:16

16 Γάρ is inserted for the very purpose of connecting all these questions with the preamble, v. 15. With the two lines of warning quoted from the psalm (v. 15, see v. 8) ringing in their ears, let the readers note who these people were that are referred to in the psalm. “Who, pray (γάρ), on having heard, made embitterment?” Why, those Jews in the wilderness. Not ignorantly did they make bitter rebellion but ἀκούσαντες, “having heard” or “after having heard,” in spite of all that God told them. So the readers of this epistle now hear. Even David’s psalm is made to sound in their ears. They are of the same nation as those who were under Moses and those mentioned in the psalm. Let them beware!

The ἀλλά is not adversative; read R. 1185, etc., and discard B.-D. 448, 4, which states that it intends to indicate that the τίνες in the first question is not τινές (not “some” but “who?”). This is the rhetorical, confirmatory ἀλλά: “yea,” “indeed” (“nay,” R. V.). “Did not all they who came out of Egypt through Moses?” i. e., did they not all cause embitterment? Our A. V. translates these questions as declarative sentences and gets the idea that only some and not all made embitterment. This is apparently done in order to exempt Joshua and Caleb.

But can two individuals convert a whole nation of over half a million into “some”? There need be no fear about two lone exceptions, especially in the case of readers who know their Old Testament. That wholesale unbelief in its frightful extent is the warning.

Hebrews 3:17

17 In v. 16 the questions drive home the bitter rebellion of those who heard, heard all that happened when they came out of Egypt under Moses. Now a parallel double question drives home the reaction of God and their miserable fate: “Moreover, with whom was he disgusted for forty years? Was it not with them who sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness?” The question that has the negative οὐ each time contains the terrible answer to the “who” question. As v. 16 refers to the embitterment mentioned in the psalm so v. 17 adds God’s disgust plus the forty years, which are also mentioned in the psalm.

In “they who sinned” there is repeated “the sin” mentioned in v. 13, which is so full of deceit. Sin and penalty are now combined: their κῶλα, “limbs” (a word that is taken from Num. 14:29, 32), i. e., their carcasses, fell in the wilderness. What a long, long line of graves—the saddest in the world! They came out of the bondage of Egypt under faithful Moses (v. 5), but they fell as corpses in the wilderness! What a dying for forty years; what deaths! Let your mind contemplate the whole tragedy. Read the lament of Moses in Ps. 90:5–9.

Hebrews 3:18

18 One more point referred to in the psalm: “Moreover, to whom did he swear that they should not enter into his rest (future infinitive in indirect dis course, R. 1032)?” Without a second question (and thus marking the end of the questions) the answer is added: “But to them who disobeyed.” The doors of God’s rest are closed to those who obdurately will not obey the voice of grace in the blessed “today” nor heed its warning. “Disobey” means refuse to believe.

Hebrews 3:19

19 Now the conclusion. At times καί has the force of “and so” (R. 1183). “And so we see that they could not enter because of unbelief” (repeating this fatal word from v. 12), the opposite of πιστός, believing and thus “faithful” (v. 5) and obedient. “We see” implies that the writer is confident of also his readers. Would that “we see” were true of us “today”! At one time they could, but soon they could not. When grace is exhausted, judgment descends. The cause (διά) was—“unbelief.” Scoff at the idea that unbelief is so fatal, that faith should be so decisive. Is it so easy to scoff at the thought of those graves?

C.-K. Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. D. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, 4th ed.

B.-D. Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neugearbeitete Auflage, besorgt von Albert Debrunner.