Bible Commentaries
Hebrews 11

Verses 1-40

XI 1-3 Nature of Faith— 1. Faith is not theologically defined but rather described in reference to things not yet possessed and not yet seen. Hence its voluntative and intellectual sides are considered. For the human will faith is a basic support. (?póstas??) as it holds to a revealed but absent end; for the intellect it is the argument or proof (??e????) giving conviction of what is not evident to senses or intellect. This is one of many explanations of this difficult sentence.

2. It is by faith the ancient saints (?? p?esß?te???) earned their testimony of praise. 3. By faith we know that the world was created by God’s word of command, so that the visible came out of invisible nothingness. Literally the text says: ’so that it was not from things that appear that the visible (universe) came to be’.

4-7 Primitive Age— 4. Abel’s faith is attested by his better sacrifice (choice firstlings), by its acceptance through some heavenly sign, by the cry of his innocent blond when dead.

5-6. Enoch was exempted from death, because he pleased God, which is impossible without faith in God as Beginning and End—Creator and Remunerator.

7. Faith in a future chastisement— one hundred years distant—showed the heroism of Noe who thereby condemned the world (with a condemnation of comparison) and became the heir of the justice which is by faith.

8-22 The Patriarchs— 8-10. Abraham when called at Ur obeyed blindly and left for Charran (Haran), where he first learned that his destination was Canaan. He lived in the land of promise as a stranger with no fixed abode—a tent-dweller—continuing to do so even with his co-heirs Isaac and Jacob. His hope was in a still unseen but firmly founded city whose architect and builder is God.

11. Abraham’s faith brought a blessing also on Sara for the founding of a posterity, because he believed the promise of God, in spite of his wife’s barrenness and old age and his own centenarian years.

12. Therefore from a man as good as dead sprang a race (both carnal and spiritual) as numerous as the stars and innumerable as the sand at the lip of the sea.

13-15. The faith of these men was fundamentally a longing for the heavenly fatherland. For its sake they left home, professed themselves pilgrims, and continued their exile when they could have returned to their original fatherland—and all that stands to their credit, while they could only give a distant salute to the glorious things of the promises which they died without attaining. 16. They certainly looked for a better country than Ur, namely, a heavenly one. The desire was, it seems, implicit, for there was as yet no explicit revelation about heaven. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called ’the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob’, cf. Christ’s use of this appellative, Exodus 3:6; Matthew 22:32.

17-19. In the offering of Isaac Abraham’s faith did not spare an only son who was actually the sole heir of the promises, for he believed that God could find away of realizing his promise even by raising Isaac from the dead.

19b. Hence he received him as a type of Christ sacrificed and brought back from death.

20. Faith kept Isaac from revoking the spiritual blessing given to Jacob and the merely temporal blessing given to Esau.

21. By faith Jacob blessed Ephraim and Manasses, consciously crossing his hands irrespective of their ages, Genesis 48:15; and earlier, Genesis 47:31, he honoured Joseph’s posterity by bowing to the top of Joseph’s rod (not apparently ’ to the top of his bed’, or ’resting on the top of his staff’).

22. Faith in the future Exodus and destiny of Israel made Joseph give orders for the burial of his bones in Canaan.

23-31 Exodus and Conquest— 23-26. Moses’ parents who saw in the beauty of their infant son a sign of divine destiny,

23, and Moses himself, refusing the life of an Egyptian Prince, in order to suffer with Israel and thus share the reproach of Christ, showed faith in a divine reward.

27. When leaving Egypt in the face of Pharaoh’s wrath, Exodus 12:37, Moses attended to the Unseen as if he saw It.

28-31. The Paschal blood, the passage of the Red Sea, the fall of the walls of Jericho, the preservation of Rahab are so many further eulogies of faith.

32-38 Miscellaneous Examples— 32. Impossible in a letter to continue the enumeration. Hence six names and a category (the Prophets) are mentioned only, and the eulogies reduced to the compendious form of a series of events in which faith shone forth. The peculiar order of the six names is to be noted—three pairs in the chronological order of their succession, but the second name of each pair is historically his companion’s predecessor.

33-35a. Conquest of kingdoms and doing of justice belong to many judges and kings, and very many persons obtained promises. Escape from lions (Daniel), from fire (there young men), from the sword David, etc.) are prodigies of preservation rewarding aith. Recovery from sickness (Ezechias), strength in war (Judges), destruction of alien camps (Judges), resurrections from death (sons of the widow of Sarepta and of the Sunamite) are all attributable to faith.

35b-37a. Heroic endurance likewise: on the rack (Machabean Martyrs); by refusal of life in view of a better resurrection (Eleazar); through scoffings (Eliseus), scourgings and imprisonment (Jeremias) under stoning (Zacharias), under trials (or burning?) under the saw (Isaias?), under the sword (many prophets).

37b-38. At mention of those in sheepskins and goatskins one thinks of men like Elias—men going about in want, distress, affliction, ’of whom the world’ that maltreated them ’was not worthy’—a really lyrical phrase in this context.

38b. We know of fifty prophets who lived in caverns to escape the fury of Jezabel. /par/par39-40. Yet all these men and women had to await our age—the fullness of time—before they could receive the promises and come to the perfection of glory which by faith they merited. Such is the greatness of Messianic privilege which apostates would throw away.